Moshin Shazad, 32, was a serious-faced man with two young children, a wife and a mother to support. To this end, he had decided to leave Lalamusa, a town in Pakistan’s Punjab. He couldn’t find a steady job and after the birth of his second child there were too many mouths to feed. He wanted to join his cousin Waheed Ali, who has been living in Norway since 2019.
He went with four other boys, four friends including Abdul Khaliq and Sami Ullah. He called his cousin shortly after boarding the overloaded fishing boat that sailed from Tobruk, Libya and was shipwrecked 47 miles from Pylos, Greece on June 14. “He said he would arrive in Italy,” says Waheed Ali, who is now searching for his cousin among the 108 survivors, many of whom have been housed in an abandoned warehouse in Kalamata, Greece, while around thirty have been taken to hospital. Many were hypothermic. But Shazad could also be among the missing.
Shawq Muhammad al Ghazali, 22, was a student originally from Daraa, Syria, who fled to Jordan, where his family and uncle Ibhraim al Ghazali currently reside. The boy had left Amman for Libya and set out from there, from Tobruk, to get to Europe. “I haven’t heard from him since June 8, the day he left Amman,” says his uncle.
According to the Greek authorities, most of the survivors are Syrians (47) and Egyptians (43), plus twelve Pakistanis and two Palestinians. All men. “I don’t know if he survived, it’s me who bring news to the family in Pakistan, but I’m desperate, I can’t understand or know anything. I found out about the shipwreck from TV,” says Waheed Ali.
The boat Moshin Shazad and the others were traveling on left Tobruk on June 8 and was bound for Italy, via a route that would have taken half of the migrants leaving Libya in 2023.
“From the first witness statements, the estimate of 700-750 people on board would be correct, including at least forty children who were probably in the cargo hold. If these numbers are confirmed, it would be the second deadliest shipwreck in the Mediterranean after April 2015,” says Flavio Di Giacomo from the International Organization for Migration (IOM). So far, 78 bodies have been recovered at sea off the Peloponnese peninsula. But the IOM said it feared hundreds more people had drowned. Hellenic Coast Guard spokesman Nikos Alexiou said the ship was wrecked after people were thrown to one side. The ship sank within fifteen minutes.
Frontex discovered them
According to the Greek authorities, a surveillance aircraft from the European agency Frontex spotted the boat on June 13. In a press release, Frontex confirmed that it saw the boat at 9:47 a.m. the day before the sinking and reported this to the authorities responsible for the rescue, i.e. the Greek Coast Guard. The Italian coast guard and two merchant ships had also reported the ship in trouble to the Greek authorities. However, according to the Greek Coast Guard, the passengers on the boat refused “any help” because the migrants were on their way to Italy.
“In the afternoon, a cargo ship approached the boat delivering food and supplies while the (passengers) refused any further assistance,” the Greek Coast Guard said in a statement. A second merchant ship later offered more supplies and help. But this time too they were rejected, according to the Greeks.
In the evening, a Coast Guard patrol boat reached the ship “and confirmed the presence of a large number of migrants on the bridge,” the Greek authorities wrote in the statement. “But they refused any help and said they wanted to continue in Italy.” Experts say international sea rescue laws would have required Greeks to intervene anyway, given the conditions in which the boat was sailing. But several witnesses dispute the version of the Greek authorities.
The boat’s engine failed just before 11pm (GMT) on 13 June and the boat has been drifting ever since. The shipwrecked people asked for help as early as June 13, calling the Alarmphone volunteer network and saying they had also contacted “the police”. Activist Nawal Soufi, who lives in Italy, said the migrants she spoke to by phone told her that some boats handing out bottled water had approached.
“In the early hours of June 13, 2023, migrants on board a boat loaded with 750 people contacted me and told me about their difficult situation. After five days of travel, the water had run out, the boatman had left them in the open sea and there were also six bodies on board. They didn’t know exactly where they were, but thanks to the instant location of the Turaya phone (satellite phone, ed.) I was able to pinpoint their exact location and alert the relevant authorities,” writes Soufi, sharing his reconstruction on Facebook.
“The situation got complicated when a ship approached the boat, tied it with ropes in two places on the boat and started throwing water bottles. The migrants felt they were in grave danger as they feared the ropes could capsize the boat and that fighting for water on board could result in shipwreck. Because of this, they moved slightly away from the ship to avoid safe shipwreck,” the activist continues in her post.
“During the night, the situation on board the ship became even more dramatic. I stayed in touch with them in Greece until 11pm trying to reassure them and help them find a solution.” Until the last call where “the man I spoke to specifically told me: ‘I have a feeling this will be our last night alive,'” he concludes. Greek MP Kriton Arsenis spoke to survivors in Kalamata. confirmed the version of the activist Soufi and explained that the boat capsized after being towed by the Greeks with ropes. According to Arsenis, the Greeks wanted to drive the refugee boat into Italian search and rescue waters.