• Source: Ghost boat investigation

The ghost boat investigations are a project looking into a group of at least 243 refugees who disappeared in the summer of 2014. None of the missing people have contacted their family members, and there are no bodies found or wreckage of any kind. One theory is that a people smuggling boat off the coast of Libya, intending to sail to Italy, disappeared without trace. A lack of wreckage is highly unusual for such a large watercraft. Reporter Eric Reidy has been investigating the case by blogging and using crowd sourcing. Bobbie Johnson, a senior editor at Medium, took Reidy's articles and created the ghost boat project to help track the missing group of "ghost boat" refugees. As of December 2015, no trace of the passengers has been found.




Background


The 243 people in the group who were to leave Libya paid $1600 to get to Europe. Measho Tesfamariam arranged the trip and "handled communication, logistics, and payment for the big smugglers". 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). Ibrahim was in charge of arranging the trip and the passengers and families' contact. Measho Tesfamariam says that the boat was due to depart from the Libyan Khums (Al-Khums) beach, but he didn't witness the departure. Tesfamariam was arrested on December 2, 2014 on people-smuggling charges. 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.
Most of the passengers were Eritreans fleeing the highly repressive military regime that rules the country. At the time, around 5,000 Eritreans fled the country every month.




Investigation


Experts say that such a large boat sinking would have left some trace. “It’s really strange,” says Othman Belbeisi, who is the International Organization for Migration’s country director for Libya. 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.'” 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. However, further digging revealed that the phone calls turned out to be a false lead.




See also


Human trafficking in Eritrea




Bibliography


Notes

References

Campbell, Zach (Nov 11, 2015). "How Matter crowdsourced the migration story". Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved December 7, 2015.
Gatti, Fabrizio (Oct 23, 2014b). "Chi è l'uomo della strage dei profughi" (in Italian). L'espresso. Retrieved January 21, 2016.
Gatti, Fabrizio (Nov 7, 2014). "Missing boat case, Measho Tesfamariam: only God knows what happened". L'espresso. Retrieved January 16, 2016.
Johnson, Bobbie (November 13, 2015). "Ghost Boat: A Primer". medium.com. Retrieved December 7, 2015.
Owen, Laura Hazard (Oct 7, 2015). "243 people disappeared on a ship in the Mediterranean; a new project from Medium aims to find them". Nieman Foundation for Journalism. Retrieved December 7, 2015.
Reidy, Eric (Oct 7, 2015). "243 People Disappeared. Young People. Women. Children. And No One Cares". medium.com. Retrieved December 7, 2015.
Reidy, Eric (Oct 29, 2015a). "Now I Have Learned That There's a Worse Thing Than Death". medium.com. Retrieved December 7, 2015.
Reidy, Eric (Nov 5, 2015b). "At First The Traffickers Were More Human. Then Slowly They Started The Torture". medium.com. Retrieved December 7, 2015.
Reidy, Eric (Nov 12, 2015c). "Someone Is Making Up Lies". medium.com. Retrieved December 7, 2015.
Simon, Scott (2015). "In Search Of A Ghost Boat And The 243 On Board". NPR. Retrieved December 7, 2015.

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