Background
The 243 people in the group who were to leave Libya paid $1600 to get to Europe. [6] Measho Tesfamariam arranged the trip and "handled communication, logistics, and payment for the big smugglers". [7] There were three other individuals who helped fill the boat: Ibrahim, Jamal el-Saoudi, and Jaber, all of whom have Sudanese passports (although Jamal is Eritrean). [8] Ibrahim was in charge of arranging the trip and the passengers and families' contact. [7] Measho Tesfamariam says that the boat was due to depart from the Libyan Khums (Al-Khums) beach, but he didn't witness the departure. [8] Tesfamariam was arrested on December 2, 2014 on people-smuggling charges. [7] Meanwhile, Eritrean Jamal el-Saoudi, who was the manager of the Tokhla group smuggling operation that arranged the ghost boat group's journey, lives in Libya where he is a well-connected man. [7]
Most of the passengers were Eritreans fleeing the highly repressive military regime that rules the country. [2] [9] At the time, around 5,000 Eritreans fled the country every month. [9]
Investigation
Experts say that such a large boat sinking would have left some trace. [2] “It’s really strange,” says Othman Belbeisi, who is the International Organization for Migration’s country director for Libya. [2] Refugee advocate and migration expert Fausto Melluso, with the Italian organization Arci in Sicily, said, “It is inconceivable that a boat with that many people can go missing in 2014 and nobody know about it.” Alganesh Fisseha, an Eritrean political activist who fled the country herself, is an expert on refugee issues. She said that it was the "first time she has heard of such a large group of people going missing without a trace. ... 'It is impossible that they disappeared into thin air.'” [4] During the Lampedusa migrant shipwreck on October 12, 2013, more than 360 deaths were reported, with just 155 survivors. In that case, bodies were spread out over the ocean.
Eric Reidy had been working as a reporter in Tunisia when he heard that refugee activist Meron Estefanos was investigating reports surrounding the ghost boat. She was looking into a mysterious phone call to relatives of those on the ghost boat that the passengers were detained in a Tunisian prison. [10] However, further digging revealed that the phone calls turned out to be a false lead. [10]
A ghost ship, also known as a phantom ship, is a vessel with no living crew aboard; it may be a fictional ghostly vessel, such as the Flying Dutchman, or a physical derelict found adrift with its crew missing or dead, like the Mary Celeste. The term is sometimes used for ships that have been decommissioned but not yet scrapped, as well as drifting boats that have been found after breaking loose of their ropes and being carried away by the wind or the waves.
The Rashaida, also known as Bani Rasheed, are a Bedouin ethnic group inhabiting the coastal plain of the Red Sea stretching from the Sudanese city of Port Sudan to the Eritrean city of Massawa. They are the descendants of Arab tribes people from Hejaz, and Najd decending from the Banu Abs tribe, who fled the Arabian peninsula in 1846 as the Saudis rose to power. They are mostly nomadic and constitute 187,500 people in Eritrea and 168,000 people in Sudan, mainly in the eastern part around Kassala.
"Bennington Triangle" is a phrase coined by American author Joseph A. Citro to denote an area of southwestern Vermont within which a number of people went missing between 1945 and 1950. This was further popularized in two books, including Shadow Child, in which Citro devoted chapters to discussion of these disappearances and various items of folklore surrounding the area. According to Citro, the area shares characteristics with the Bridgewater Triangle in Southeastern Massachusetts and stories of strange happenings had been told about Glastonbury and the surrounding area for many years, the best-known of which is probably that of the disappearance of Paula Jean Welden.
African emigrants to Italy include Italian citizens and residents originally from Africa. Immigrants from Africa officially residing in Italy in 2015 numbered about 1,000,000 residents. Afro-Italians (Afroitaliani) are Italians born and are raised in Italy, citizen of African descent or of mixed African and Italian roots.
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In 2021, Istat estimated that 5,171,894 foreign citizens lived in Italy, representing about 8.7% of the total population. 98 to 99 percent more of Italy's full population is (caucasioid) as 2024. These figures include naturalized foreign-born residents as well as illegal immigrants, the so-called clandestini, whose numbers, difficult to determine, are thought to be at least 670,000.
The Lampedusa immigrant reception center, officially Reception Center (CDA) of Lampedusa, has been operating since 1998, when the Italian island of Lampedusa became a primary European entry point for immigrants from Africa. It is one of a number of centri di accoglienza (CDA) maintained by the Italian government. The reception center's capacity of 801 people has been greatly exceeded by numerous people arriving on boats from various parts of Africa.
On 3 October 2013, a boat carrying migrants from Libya to Italy sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa. It was reported that the boat had sailed from Misrata, Libya, but that many of the migrants were originally from Eritrea, Somalia and Ghana. An emergency response involving the Italian Coast Guard resulted in the rescue of 155 survivors. On 12 October it was reported that the confirmed death toll after searching the boat was 359, but that further bodies were still missing; a figure of "more than 360" deaths was later reported.
During 2015, there was a period of significantly increased movement of refugees and migrants into Europe. 1.3 million people came to the continent to request asylum, the most in a single year since World War II. They were mostly Syrians, but also included significant numbers from Afghanistan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Iraq, Eritrea, and the Balkans. The increase in asylum seekers has been attributed to factors such as the escalation of various wars in the Middle East and ISIL's territorial and military dominance in the region due to the Arab Winter, as well as Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt ceasing to accept Syrian asylum seekers.
Operation Sophia, formally European Union Naval Force Mediterranean, was a military operation of the European Union that was established as a consequence of the April 2015 Libya migrant shipwrecks with the aim of neutralising established refugee smuggling routes in the Mediterranean. The operational headquarters was located in Rome. The EU mandate for the operation ended on March 31, 2020. Operation Irini is the successor operation.
This is a timeline of the European migrant crisis of 2015 and 2016.
Proactiva Open Arms (POA) is a Spanish NGO devoted to search and rescue (SAR) at sea. Set up in October 2015, it carried out its first rescue action that same month from its base on the Greek island of Lesbos. As well as maintaining a permanent base on Lesbos, the NGO carries out its rescue operations from three ships, a sailing yacht Astral, the Golfo Azzurro and Open Arms.
The Libyan Coast Guard is the coast guard of Libya. Organizationally part of the Libyan Navy, it operates as a proxy force of the European Union (EU) in order to prevent migrants from reaching the EU's borders. As of 2015, the Libyan Coast Guard consists of over 1,000 personnel. Since 2015, it has received $455 million in funding from the EU. The Libyan Coast Guard is involved in human trafficking, enslavement, torture, and other human rights violations.
The Alarm-Phone-Initiative is a project operated since 8 October 2014 by volunteers from Europe, Tunisia and Morocco, which is committed to the sea rescue of refugees. The 'Alarm-Phone-Initiative' website provides a web resource to help refugees in need of rescue at sea, while the 'Watch The Med' website monitors and summarises events involving refugees in the Mediterranean.
Meron Estefanos is a Swedish-Eritrean human rights activist and journalist. She first became known in the Eritrean refugee community in 2011 for helping people who had been kidnapped and tortured by human traffickers on their way to Israel in order to extort ransom money from their relatives, exemplified in the 2013 documentary film Sound of Torture. After the migrant and trafficking routes changed to Libya, her efforts continued and uncovered criminal networks reaching into Europe. As of 2022, Estefanos deplored that no traffickers had been brought to justice, with little interest from national governments and international organisations.
