Amnesty International in a report today highlighted the extent of the migration problem in the Mediterranean and also homed in on the plight of individual migrants.

The report was compiled before the tragedy on Saturday night, but it highlights serious gaps in search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean, especially after Italy stopped operation Mare Nostrum.

The following are some of the first hand accounts:
January 22, 2015, Abubaker Kallow, 21 from Gambia:

“There was an Arab man, he told us to keep the direction for eight hours, he told us how to fill the tank with fuel, then he jumped in the water and left. We were at sea all night, but we did not reach Italy… People started losing their mind. Some said they wanted to go and get food or go back to their country, then jumped into the water. I do not know how many jumped… I lost concentration… Some drank sea water… Many died…

"We threw the bodies in the water, I do not know how many… When we arrived in Malta they allowed us to call our families. I called my mum. She cried when I told her that others died.”

Jean, from the Ivory Coast:

“I ran away from my country because my family threatened me after I said I did not want my daughter to be cut [undergo a female genital mutilation]… The smugglers were armed. Some of us were scared and did not want to go, but nobody could turn back. They gave us no maps, nothing. They just said: go straight ahead and that’s Italy!”

Up to 34 people died at sea out of some 122 people travelling on a boat rescued by the Armed Forces of Malta on January 22, 2015. 88 young men from Sub-Saharan Africa were saved, but one died in hospital shortly after the rescue.

Survivors held in Safi migrants’ detention centre in Malta told Amnesty International that they left Garabouli, Libya, on 15 January at about 6pm. They had no telephones, water, or food, and no life jackets. They were packed so tightly in their small inflatable dinghy that they could not sit or lie down to sleep. They soon became exhausted, cold and extremely thirsty.

After a few days, fuel ran out and the dinghy started taking on water. They had no buckets to empty it out and some felt their feet freezing from being immersed for days in cold water.

Their boat had been drifting for around eight days before a fishing boat spotted them some 2.5nm east of Maltese shores at 7:00am. Within 30 minutes, two Armed Forces of Malta patrol boats, one of which operating under Triton, reached the boat in distress. Neither Maltese authorities nor Triton assets had seen it before then, as it entered Malta’s territorial waters and almost made it to land.

Shipwreck on February 8/9, 2015
Lam, 24 from Mali:

“I had to leave Libya, staying or going back to my country would have been too dangerous…We were 107 on my boat, the smugglers counted us…People were falling in the water, but no one could help.

"Those who fell in the sea tried to catch the boat again but did not manage. I saw three falling in the water. Others died for other reasons, maybe lack of food and water…Only God knows what I felt when I saw the others dying…We were only seven left when rescue arrived”

On February 8, 2015, four shipwrecks resulted in the death of over 330 victims.
Italian coast guard officials told Amnesty International they received a satellite phone call for help early in the afternoon on February 8from a location 120nm south of Lampedusa and 40nm north of Libya. The call was mostly unintelligible but the officials could make out the words “dangerous, dangerous” in English. The Italian coast guard sent a search aircraft and two patrol boats, followed by a further two after one of the initial boats reported an engine problem.

Despite prohibitive weather conditions, with exceptionally strong winds and several metres-high waves, Italian coast guard responders managed to reach the boat in distress after approximately 6.5 hours of navigation and rescued 105 people from one dinghy at 9pm.

Those rescued were transferred to patrol boats. As weather conditions deteriorated during the 18-hour journey back, with rain, hail and waves of up to eight metres high, 29 of those rescued died. Scantily clothed, weakened by up to two days of drifting in bad weather and near-freezing temperatures, they could not endure the further exposure to the elements in the uncovered coast guard vessels and died of hypothermia.

“They were exhausted, thirsty, very hungry…As we proceeded to transfer the men onto our vessels, with a merchant vessel trying to shelter us, the sea became even rougher and we could not see much. We gave them foil blankets and heat packs, but they were not much use…It was very cold, perhaps zero degrees. Some were so drenched they took off all their clothes…To keep them warm we made them rotate inside the cabin, but it was all very difficult. We were all feeling sick and scared. We feared for our lives…I felt so enraged: saving them and then seeing them die like that…”said Nurse Salvatore Caputo, who was on board Italian coast guard vessel CP302.

Shortly afterwards, two merchant vessels in the area rescued a further nine men, two in one dinghy and seven in another.

Amnesty International interviewed some of the survivors soon after their arrival in Lampedusa. A horrific story emerged.

Some 420 refugees and migrants had left together from the Libyan port town of Garabouli, 40km west of Tripoli, in four inflatable dinghies. Most were young men from West Africa and several were minors. People smugglers had kept them near Tripoli to await the journey after charging them the equivalent of around 650 euros.

On the evening of 7 February, the smugglers, armed, made them board the dinghies, which were numbered 1 to 4. The boats were powered by small outboard motors, and the smugglers had not provided enough petrol for the trip. Italian coast guard officials, later interviewed by Amnesty International, stressed that the weather forecast in that part of the Mediterranean was bad for the entire week and that the refugees and migrants were sailing towards certain death.

Early on 8 February, the boats drifted in the Mediterranean Sea north of Libya, in serious danger. High waves were washing people off the dinghies and into the sea. The first dinghy deflated and started taking on water until it was found by the Italian coast guard patrol boats. The second was never found and left no survivors.

Merchant vessels assisted two more dinghies. One of these had only seven people alive on board and it went down with many dead bodies while the survivors were climbing the rope thrown to them by the crew of the merchant vessel. The fourth dinghy was found by another merchant vessel in the afternoon of 9 February, deflated and with only the front side afloat, to which two men had managed to hold on.

Survivors believe that more than 330 of their fellow travellers perished, as they estimated that about 105 people were on board each of the four dinghies.
Apart from the two commercial vessels in the area, the Italian coast guard was left alone to provide assistance on that day, the head of the Italian MRCC told Amnesty International.

March 5
Mohammed, 25, Palestinian from Lebanon:

"At 5pm, an American ship [Liberian, the flags are similar] was coming, we saw it. It came close to our boat. ... They threw a rope ladder ... Many tried to get on it and the boat capsized … I fell into the water, I was the first one. I couldn't breathe. When we were in the water it was like a war scene. There were helicopters and boats around us… Immirdan, a Syrian woman, about 35, died with her one-year old son. They couldn't swim. She had asked me for some bread, chocolate, cheese, I gave it to her. 20 minutes later, the boat capsized. I saw her. I also saw another woman, black, who died. And I saw Navy officials, on the big boat, trying to resuscitate a man. But they didn't succeed."

In the afternoon of March 4, a boat carrying some 150 people, including some 20 women and 10 children, capsized at about 50nm from Libyan shores when a big tug boat in service around the Libyan oil platform in the area approached to assist them. The boat had left Tripoli, Libya, the night before. The people on board, who were mostly Syrians, Palestinians, Eritreans, Sudanese and Somalis, were desperate for help as their boat had been taking on water. Many moved to one side of the boat, towards the ladder that the crew of the tug boat had thrown to them, causing it to capsize.

The Italian coast guard vessel, Dattilo, was nearby, with 381 people rescued in a previous operation already on board. It managed to save 121 people from the sea. It also retrieved 10 bodies.

The Italian and Maltese coastguards both told Amnesty International that preventing the capsizing of the boat being rescued is a primary concern. They know that people on a boat in distress tend to stand up suddenly when they see rescuers approaching and move to the side from where they see help coming. To avoid such risk, professional rescuers approach the boat with a smaller vessel such as a rigid-inflatable boat (rib), on the front, or with two ribs, one on either side. The tug boat crew involved in this case could not do so.

See report in full on pdf below.