Alarm Phone is supporting the families in their right to the truth
Source: Alarm Phone
Within a period of three weeks in April 2025, three boats disappeared in the Central Mediterranean. With them, three groups of people vanished, almost entirely without traces. After more than eight months, countless families still have no closure, because they don’t know the fate of their missing relatives. States on both sides of the border are politically – and sometimes directly – responsible for deaths and disappearances at sea, while simultaneously monopolizing and withholding access to crucial information.
The right to truth that‘s being denied is why we demand unconditional assistance in shedding light on the whereabouts of the disappeared persons of the three groups in April and of all people disappeared at European borders, until nobody has to die or disappear anymore.
April 5: 39 people disappeared
During April 7, we were contacted by several people looking for their relatives who departed on the evening of the 5th from Janzur, a neighbourhood on the coast north-west of Tripoli in Libya. The available information was scarce: besides the place and time of departure we were only told that there were 39 people supposed to be on board.
We realized that the MRCC Rome was already aware of the boat, as they issued a search alert to all ships in the area (Mayday Relay) at around midday on April 7.
The INMARSAT message sent by the Italian Maritime Rescue Center in the morning of April 7, alerting all vessels in the are to a boat in distress with 36 people on board 6 close to Tripoli. Source: Alarm Phone
Several times we tried to reach the so-called Libyan Coast Guard. On the morning of April 8, they told us they had gone looking for the boat during the previous night but only intercepted another boat with 20 people and forced them back to Libya.
It remains unclear, where MRCC Rome got the information in the INMARSAT from, given the detail of 36 persons and the reported location of the boat being in Libyan Territorial Waters. We can only assume the information was provided by people on land, possibly somebody who had observed the departure.
Considering the Mayday Relay by the MRCC Rome was issued 38 hours after the referred position of the boat and repeated five times until the early morning of April 8, it seems that MRCC Rome also had no knowledge of what happened to the boat.
The position from the INMARSAT sent by the MRCC Rome, not even 6 nautical miles from shore. Map by Alarm Phone.
In the following days, more and more families reached out to Alarm Phone. Still without news, people started to look for the group in Libyan detention centers, both official and some unofficial ones. Some time and many efforts later it became clear that the group could not be found in any of those prisons.
Few weeks later, on May 3, we learned from Mohammad, a trusted comrade of Alarm Phone, that the body of an approximately 60 year-old man of Syrian nationality was visually identified by a relative in a hospital in Tripoli on May 1 and he had been on the missing boat according to his family. Until today, his remains the only body of a person who was on this boat which could be identified and thus the only trace. From the Libyan NGO Libya Crimes Watch we know that during the weeks after the disappearance of the boat several bodies were recovered from beaches around Tripoli. None of these were identified and we cannot say if they were people from that boat or another. After all, during April several other shipwrecks were reported.
Many weeks went by without news. This changed, when in end of August we learnt that the father of a disappeared person in Pakistan was called by an unknown Libyan number. The person on the other end told him he was working in a Libyan detention camp where he met the missing son, who reportedly asked him to call his father and pass on the news he was still alive. While this created lots of hope, it is the kind of information that is often spread. When asked to provide a proof the caller requested money in exchange. Over the time, the person got in contact with more families, always assuring their relatives were held in that center, always without being able to provide proof. The families took many measures to confirm the detention of their missing loved ones through relatives living in Libya, without being able to confirm the presence of their relatives in said detention camp. Tragically, Alarm Phone often hears that people are trying to exploit the desperation of searching families through false stories about their disappeared loved ones being still alive.
This is a despicable act that adds to the immense pain that remaining relatives go through, for whom losing their loved ones without being able to bury them or ever having certainty about what happened is terrible enough. It is one of the many cruelties resulting directly from the externalized European border regime, which turns human suffering into profit. The border infrastructure enables militias to use detention centers as sites for extortion and trafficking to fill their own pockets, turning them into stakeholders of a system that benefits them. This kind of violence is thus an inherent – not to mention: well-documented – but silenced result of European policies.
In October, the passport of one person from Punjab, Pakistan, who disappeared with this group was found in a bag on a beach in Libya and returned through the embassy to his family. However, the holder of the passport himself remains disappeared.
In December 2025, some families of people who went missing with this group reported having been contacted by the Moroccan embassy in Libya, which told them their missing relatives were held in a Libyan detention facility. The Moroccan embassy requested official documents to prove the identity of the people in order to organize a repatriation. Since then, neither Libyan nor Moroccan authorities are responsive anymore. Alarm Phone tried to verify these information but until now we can not confirm people who were on the missing boat are held in any Libyan camp. This unconfirmed information creates a lot of hope and at the same time a huge uncertainty.
From experience with similar cases we know that if the people would have been kidnapped, demands to families to pay ransoms for their release would have been made long ago already, as it is usually the case for survivors taken back to Libya.
We can only wonder, what happened to the group?
April 26: 52 people disappeared
At the end of April, two more boats disappeared and with them around 100 people. In the morning of April 28 Alarm Phone was informed about a boat which departed from Zawiya in the evening of April 26 with 52 people, trying to reach European shores. We received an old position, indicating that a few hours after departure the boat was close to al-Bouri platform , 67 nautical miles north of Zawiyah.
Map showing the location of the boat in the morning of August 27. Map by Alarm Phone.
During the next days, Alarm Phone constantly tried to reach the boat via the satellite phone on board, without ever establishing contact. We also tried to collect information from authorities both north and south of the Mediterranean, in that case Libya and Tunisia, but no trace of the group was found.
On May 3, a relative called us and breaks horrible news A friend of him spoke to a survivor of a shipwreck. After the engine stopped, some people on board tried first to restart it and when this did not work, to repair the engine. In the process, sparks were created, which immediately ignited the remaining fuel close by, causing a rapidly spreading fire on board. Not being able to extinguish it quickly enough, many people jumped into the sea.
When after 24 hours Tunisian fishermen came across the scene by chance, they only found two survivors still swimming. Both heavily burnt were brought to a hospital in Tunisia. Two days later, the survivor spoke to another person, confirming the first account and adding that he survived by clinging to a piece of wood and an empty jellycan.
On May 5, Abraham Tesfay, a long-term trusted comrade of Alarm Phone, spoke with the second survivor who confirmed the unimaginable horrors and that he and the first survivor were the only ones found alive.
Again some days later, one of the survivors recognized the picture of two missing people, a couple from Syria who married recently. They were with him on the same trip, which is the final confirmation that the two survivors in Tunisia were on the same missing boat which departed on April 26 from Zawiya.
Alarm Phone was contacted by the uncle of a missing person, who said he received information from Malta that his nephew was being detained. Although the uncle felt sure about it, the information provided by a self-proclaimed lawyer turned out to be false after our partners in Malta took a closer look at the documents. It was not possible to verify a possible detention in Malta with the authorities, but there is no trace of survivors arriving on those dates that would fit the event.
Being in contact with many families, Alarm Phone tried to get in direct contact with either the survivors or the fishermen. Due to the trauma they went through and the ongoing healing, the survivors did not want to speak again to more people about the incidents and the fishermen could not be identified. Having to rely on only these testimonies without proof, pictures, or bodies to bury makes it impossible for many of the families of disappeared people to process their loss.
April 26: 46 people disappeared
On the same day another boat departed east of Tripoli from Misrata. In the morning of April 28 Alarm Phone learnt from a relative about a boat with 46 people which had departed in the evening of April 26. After we forwarded the alert to the relevant authorities, we constantly called the boat on the satellite phone, but in vain. During the following days, more and more relatives from all over Europe got in contact, desperately searching for news of their loved ones. We learnt that all people on the boat were from Eritrea and among them were six women.
A plane operated by FRONTEX, the European border guard, Eagle 3 (HEX: 43EE55) was flying in the area north of Misrata both on April 27 and 28. On the 27th it even did two flights, one in the morning, one in the afternoon.
On May 2, 9 and 13 we learn from Social Media posts that several bodies were washed ashore on beaches close to Misrata. Not even three weeks after the boat disappeared, thirty bodies have been washed ashore in the area. While strongly fearing a relation, we could only confirm it on May 31 when a relative recognized her missing brother on one of the pictures posted on social media by the clothes he was wearing during the trip.
Alay Asmerom Okbe was born in January 2005 in Eritrea. In October 2023 he fled to Libya and left towards Europe with the rest of the group on April 26. We admire his courage and mourn his death, so much too soon. May he rest in peace.
Alay Asmerom Okbe. Photos provided by his family
30 bodies were recovered but only one identified. The rest of the people remain disappeared and the affected families cannot find closure. Soon after the events, the family of another passenger was sure to recognize him on a social media post about an interception off Tobruk, far in the east of Libya. The families of the disappeared people and Alarm Phone tried all possible measures and mobilized all contacts to find the person, to get in touch and to verify if it was truly the person thought to be. Unfortunately, due to the secrecy and opacity of the detention camps in Libya and the even more rigid and repressive regime in the eastern part it was not possible to trace the person. Therefore, some little hope remains and the other 45 people remain disappeared until today.
What happened?
For all three groups, both families and Alarm Phone have contacted several local Red Cross/ Red Crescent offices in many different countries. While they record every missing person request in a detailed way, they face the same problems as we do: They lack reliable contacts in Libya. It remains a mistery to us and families how bodies washed ashore in Libya are recovered by local Red Crescent branches but the family links program of the same organization is not able to give any helpful answers.
Once such a disaster as these takes place, it is a question of dignity to at least try to provide answers to the families of the disappeared persons. The silence of authorities and the impossibility for NGOs to give answers to families creates an unbearable ever-present absence of the disappeared. Neither having a confirmation of the relative’s death, nor a sign of life creates space for rumours. Already painful enough, this lack of news is often exploited by people falsely stating they are in contact with the missing persons or found them in a prison and can release them for a given amount of money. Too often already we were told by families about such instances, where after the payment took place, the persons who reported to have information stopped answering or went offline completely.
130 people disappeared affects 130 families across the world, both close and far from the Mediterranean.
We stand together with the families who have to endure the horrible situation not knowing what happened to their loved ones. Are their brothers, sisters, partners still alive? Many people told us this year they cannot eat, drink, work, sleep, are unable to find rest, disturbed by sorrows about the fate of their loved ones.
What happened to them?
