Greek newspaper Kathimerini published a transcript of a report made by the captain of patrol boat 920 on Sunday. As a result, the captain offered help to the completely overcrowded fishing boat about two hours before the accident, but was refused.
The report went on to say that the refugee ship proceeded after contact and the patrol boat pursued it at a distance. However, the BBC cites ship motion data indicating the boat remained virtually stationary for seven hours before sinking.
Contacts always in the same place
Ship movement can be tracked on MarineTraffic, a marine traffic analysis platform. The fishing boat did not have a tracking device, so it was not on the map, as are Coast Guard and military vessels, which are not required to share their location. However, the migrant vessel had several contacts with other vessels, all of which were concentrated in the small area where the migrant vessel later sank.
In the afternoon, the tanker “Lucky Sailor” arrived at the boat and, at the request of the Coast Guard, delivered water and food. Two and a half hours later, drinking water was also brought to the ship by line from the “Guerreiro Fiel” tanker. When the ship sank a few hours later, MarineTraffic shows several ships rushing to the same spot to help. The first, the luxury yacht Mayan Queen, later brought most of the survivors to the mainland. For everyone else, help came too late. The fact that the boat barely moved in the last few hours is also consistent with the statements of the survivors, who said that three days after departure, on Friday, the mower’s engine no longer started.
Attached rope controversy
According to the log, the captain and his crew were informed about the boat in distress by the Maritime Search and Rescue Center in Piraeus, Greece, around 3 pm on Tuesday. The patrol boat immediately departed for the region. Late in the evening, at 11:40 pm, the boat was boarded at about 200 meters and help was offered.
“We approached the ship to check its condition and that of the passengers and to provide assistance again”, quoted the newspaper the captain, whose name was not disclosed. Then the officers attached a rope to the bow of the ship. The rope had already played a big part in the allegations a few days ago: several survivors claimed that the Coast Guard tried to tow the boat, so to speak, and thus caused the sinking. The authorities denied this, but after a while they at least admitted that they had tied the line “for stabilization”.
Coast Guard wants to have a boat accompanied
The captain’s log says that calls like “No Help” and “Go Italy” could be heard on board – no help was needed, the destination was Italy. “Despite repeated pleas, if they needed help, they ignored us and untied the rope around 11:57 pm. They started the engine and headed west at low speed.” The patrol boat then informed the search and rescue center and followed the boat at a distance of 200 meters, the captain said.
The mower stopped again about 100 minutes later. Then the boat slowly tilted. There was uproar among the passengers and screams could also be heard. However, the boat capsized within a minute. The Mediterranean Sea is about 5,000 meters deep at this point. Of the approximately 700 people on board, 104 were rescued. 78 bodies were recovered.
Gang of smugglers from Egypt
Together with the Italian police and the European police authority Europol, the Greeks are now investigating the masterminds behind the gang of human smugglers. After the crash, nine Egyptians aged between 20 and 40, who were among the survivors, were arrested.
The gang is said to have organized up to 18 trips across the Mediterranean, from Libya to Italy, in recent months. One of the men admitted to having been paid money to work on the ship during the voyage, Greek media reported. The other men have reportedly denied all allegations by now.