Lone survivor found floating alongside two corpses off the Libyan coast

A lone survivor of a boat wreck was found floating alongside the bodies of a woman and young boy 150 kilometres off the Libyan coast on 17 July.

The 40-year-old Cameroonian woman, who survived the wreck, was rescued by the Spanish humanitarian rescue organization Proactiva Open Arms. Images and videos of the wreckage and dead bodies posted on social media by the NGO have caused outrage across Europe.

Four days after the rescue, the survivor and the bodies arrived on the Spanish island of Mallorca, where the surviving woman is receiving medical treatment for physical and psychological trauma.

In a statement explaining why the NGO had decided to go back to Spain, as opposed to landing in Italy, Proactiva Open Arms said Italian authorities had offered to take in the woman, but not the two bodies.  The NGO stated that they feared “for the protection of the surviving woman and her complete freedom to testify” about what had happened at sea if they left her in Italy.

A spokesman for the Libyan coastguard,Ayoub Qassem said that a boat carrying 158 passengers, including 34 women and nine children, had been stopped off the coast on 16 July, according to an article in the Metro newspaper. The coastguard has rejected reports that it abandoned the migrants at sea, but offered no explanation for how the three migrants came to be stranded on the remains of a destroyed rubber boat.

The director of Proactiva Open Arms, Oscar Camps, said to Reuters that the three individuals had refused to board Libyan vessels with the rest of the intercepted migrants, after which the Libyan coastguard decided to destroy the boat and abandon the remaining migrants in the open sea.

In reference to Italy’s policies and its hardline interior minister, Camps said “the blame for this crime falls on Matteo Salvini’s policies.”

“This is the direct consequence of contracting armed militias to make the rest of Europe believe that Libya is a state, a government and a safe country,” Camps said in a video posted to Twitter.

Salvini responded by claiming that any criticism of his country proves that his policies are right. “Lies and insults from some foreign NGO confirm that we are right: Reducing the departures and disembarkation means reducing deaths and reducing the earnings of those who speculate on clandestine migration,” Salvini said in a Facebook post.

At a news conference following the events, Camps announced that his organization is filing complaints against a merchant ship and the Libyan coastguard.

“We have filed a complaint against the captain of the Triades for failing to help and for involuntary manslaughter and we’ll also do it against the captain of the Libyan patrol,” Camps said according to Reuters.

Proactiva Open Arms is the only humanitarian rescue organization still conducting operations in the central Mediterranean.

TMP – 10/08/2018