di Fabrizio Gatti from L'Espresso Press Italy
Lampedusa shipwreak: those 268 deads could have been avoided Le foto di bambini, uomini e donne siriani morti nel naufragio dell'11 ottobre
The death of 268 Syrian refugees, who drowned on October 11th off the coast of Lampedusa, could have been avoided. Video Interview with Survival:
A report conducted by “L'Espresso” has reconstructed the incredible conduct of Italian authorities and the effects of European regulations. Three distress calls via satellite were totally ignored. Two hours of waiting at sea. Only to discover that Italy hadn’t dispatched any aircraft, any Navy ship, any Coast Guard patrol boat. On the contrary, the Italian operations centre informed the refugees adrift at 100 kilometres from Lampedusa that they were supposed to call Malta – which was at least 230 kilometres away. Two hours wasted: from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. that Friday, October 11th. Had Italians been activated sooner, or had they immediately passed the alarm on to their colleagues in Valletta, the carnage could have been avoided.
11 October shipwreck, how Italy did non rescued the children's boat
There were between 100 and 150 children on board the fishing-boat, out of a total of at least 480 Syrians escaping from war: the previous night some rounds of machine-gun fire from a Libyan patrol boat had pierced through the hull. And at 5:10 p.m. the fishing-boat capsized and sunk to the bottom of the sea. A helicopter reached the site at 5:30 p.m. – six and a half hours after the initial distress call. The first military ship from Malta arrived at 5:51 p.m. Had those two hours not been wasted, the helicopter would have arrived at 3:30 p.m., while the military ship would have reached the site at 3:51 p.m. Rescuers who were dispatched from Lampedusa on board a fast patrol boat belonging to the Guardia di Finanza could have begun emergency operations just shortly after 1:00 p.m. and not later than 6:30 p.m. There would have been enough time to transfer all the passengers on board and bring them to safety.
“L’Espresso” has tracked down the man who made the distress call to the Italian operations centre using a satellite telephone. He is the one who reported the delay in rescue operations. His name is Mohanad Jammo and he’s forty years of age. In the Syrian city of Aleppo, one of those destroyed by civil war, he worked as Chief of the Intensive Care and Anaesthesia Unit of the Ibn Roshd Hospital (a public hospital), as Director of the Anaesthesia and Kidney Anti-Rejection Transplant team, in addition to being Manager of the “Claude Bernard” French-Syrian clinic. Dr. Jammo survived the shipwreck along with his wife, a former university professor in Mechanical Engineering, and their five-year-old daughter. But he lost his children Mohamad (6) and Nahel (9 months), whose bodies have yet to be recovered.
His report has been confirmed by two other witnesses. The first one is Ayman Mustafa (38), a surgeon from Aleppo. Dr. Mustafa had set sail along with his wife Fatena Kathib (27), an environmental engineer, and their daughter Joud (3). They have both disappeared to the bottom of the sea. The other witness is Mazen Dahhan (36), a neurosurgeon from the Aleppo University Hospital. Again, he is the sole survivor of his family: his wife Reem Chehade (30), a chemist, and their children Mohamed (9), Tarek (4) and Bisher (1) are officially lost at sea. These three physicians hope for an inquiry to be established by the Italian judiciary system. «Due to this inexcusable delay», they tell “l'Espresso”, «we have lost our families. It makes no sense to remain silent and run the risk that tragedies of the sort repeat themselves».
As explained by Dr. Jammo: «I got in touch with the Italian telephone number before 11 o’clock in the morning. A woman answered the phone. She spoke in English and said: “Give me your exact position”. So I gave her our geographical coordinates. I said: “Please, we are on a boat in the middle of the sea, we’re all Syrians, many of us are physicians, our lives are at risk, the boat is sinking”. Should there be a recording of that telephone call, these are the exact words: “We’re heading towards death, there are more than one-hundred children on board. Please, please, help us, please”».
Nothing happened for an hour and a half: «I called the number again, it was approximately 12:30 p.m. I repeated my name. The same woman answered my call. She said: “Okay, okay, okay” and hung up. But nothing happened. No one returned our call. I called again half an hour later. By now it was one o’clock in the afternoon. The woman put me on “hold” and the phone was picked up by a man some time later. He said: “Look, you’re in an area under the jurisdiction of Malta authorities. You have to get in touch with the Maltese Navy”. I begged him: “Please, we are about to die”. And he replied: “Please call the Maltese authorities yourself. I’ll give you the number…”. From the map we could tell that Lampedusa was only 100-110 kilometres away, while Malta was at a distance of at least 230 kilometres. That’s why we rang the Italian authorities in the first place».
Dr. Jammo also states that the man did not report his name, rank or position: «We lost two hours’ of precious time because of the Italian rescue centre. We had so little time left. It was one o’clock and I began calling and calling Maltese authorities. When it was three o’clock in the afternoon they assured us that they would arrive in 45 minutes’ time. At four o’clock they told me: “Okay, we’re sure of your position now. But we still need an hour and ten minutes to reach you”. Ten minutes past five o’clock, all our children drowned and rescuers had yet to reach us».
07 novembre 2013