The Central Med is arguably the world’s deadliest sea crossing. NGO boats have been been hobbled & EUR ships largely withdrawn. What’s really happening? We spent months analysing Search & Rescue (SAR) cases. This THREAD unpacks findings & methods. 1st up sources & actors

Our data sources on SAR in the Central Med can be divided into 2 categories: sources providing data on migrant boats and data sources on vessels and aircrafts operating in the area. Warning: maritime jargon incoming.

@alarm_phone, an independent hotline for people in distress, shared its logbook of SAR cases from 2020, incl coordinates/timestamps of number of people on board (POB), narrative of events, comms w/authorities & witness testimonies

@seawatch_intl an NGO which operates SAR aircrafts & vessels in the area shared their mission reports, incl info on SAR cases, again coordinates/timestamps, PoB, boat types, radio intercepts & comms with authorities

@UNmigration shared records of people disembarked in Libya after Libyan coastguard (LCG) intercepted them. This helped identify the fate of SAR cases where @alarm_phone, @seawatch_intl lost contact w/PoB & fate unknown

We also had access to the records of independent journalists who covered past cases, such as @saracreta a core member of our research team, who’s been doing extensive reporting on the ground in Libya for some time now

Tracking EU/Frontex aircraft in the Central Med is not easy, commercial websites were instructed to stop tracking @Frontex aircraft since Apr 2020. We had to rely on independent flight data sources

Used @ADSBexchange, a non-profit tracker which provides unfiltered flight records, but we also used @planefinder, a commercial service, which unlike the others, still tracks Frontex. The work of indie spotters like @scandura also invaluable

When the LCG intercepts an asylum seekers’ boat escaping Libya & returns it to shore this is called a pull-back. European craft can’t legally push them back from intl waters as Libya is not a safe country of return

We created our main database of pullbacks, the next step was to merge it with flight data. @EmmanFre (core member of the research team) did a great job in visualizing both flight data & migrants boat data on maps

This gave us a rough idea of every incident: who spotted a boat & when to interception. Next the boat data we made an interactive sea map w/merchant vessels, w/ @VesselFinder data & @obtusatum provided a great playback map. Now we could see which vessels were nearby

To verify our claims & wrote a python script to parse the data to calculate the closest vessels for each case we had timestamps/coordinates for (thanks to Filippos Feizidis).

An example: March 14 is an SAR case with big delay, flight data shows Frontex aircraft G-WKTI heading in the direction of a boat before the coverage disappears, we know from confidential sources that it spotted the boat around 06:00z. map credit: @EmmanFre

When the LCG finally arrived at 18:00z, the boat was already in Malta’s SAR zone & 12hrs had passed. Several merchant vessels were in a better position to rescue much earlier. On another day, this might have been a tragic shipwreck story.
Map credit: @obtusatum

June 25: 2 boats were travelling close to each other near the Malta SAR zone. When @seawatch_intl found the first boat the situation was alarming, the LCG was on the scene, doing dangerous maneuvers near the migrant boats, 4ppl were already in the water

Survivor testimony to @alarm_phone, confirmed to us, that the LCG threw potatoes at them & attacked their boat with sharp objects. When the violent interception was over only two out of the four people were recovered from the water.

Reconstructing the event it’s highly probable Frontex aircraft 2-WKTJ spotted then between 09:00-10:00z, the LCG needed about 8hrs to reach them. In this case, the delay wasn’t deadly but commercial vessels could have rescued sooner & the violence of the LCG cost lives

Overall we studied 95 cases from 2020 & 6 cases from March this year. In 51 cases asylum seekers were intercepted by the LCG. In 20 cases Frontex circled/flew in the direct vicinity of the boat & appears to be the 1st to spot the boat in 12 of them.

2 shipwrecks took place between 15-18 August last year, in both cases the LCG refused to intervene saying that their offshore vessel’s engine had technical problems & couldn't sail. We have fishermen to thank for the fact that some people survived. http://shorturl.at/pHO02 

@saracreta travelled to Libya and discovered that only two out of 6 vessels that were donated to Libya are operational at the moment. three vessels have been in Italy for maintenance for months.

It's clear and obvious that the LCG is not only incapable of taking the rescue responsibility but also underequipped. It failed to intervene last Friday resulting in the deaths of 130 people when their flimsy craft was capsized in heavy seas. http://shorturl.at/dkU37 

Despite talk of sovereign SAR zones, interceptions not rescue is priority. In at least 9 cases Malta left the LCG to intercept boats in its SAR. The chilling effect of this is clear. Arrivals to Malta have dropped from 1135 people in Q1 2020 to 65 this year.

@saracreta confirmed this pattern when aboard the Fezzan in March 28. The Libyans got radio instructions from an unknown source to intercept a boat in Malta’s SAR. No questions were asked, it was clearly standard practice

Compare & contrast 2 Navtex bulletins to all vessels. One is relation to a US citizen, the other is in regard to an asylum seekers’ boat http://www.frisnit.com/cgi-bin/navtex/view.cgi?id=4496624

This was a collective effort of many brilliant colleagues @saracreta @EmmanFre @stluedke @TomasStatius @ShafaghLaghai @StraatmannLara , the investigation was coordinated by @klaasvandijken @LHreports

All publications can be found here https://www.lighthousereports.nl/investigation/frontex-in-the-central-mediterranean/