1,000 lost on one boat – this woman hopes to name them

On 18 April 2015 more than 1,000 refugees and migrants left Libya in an overloaded fishing boat bound for Europe. On a moonless night in the Mediterranean the vessel sank. But those who drowned are not forgotten – for the last five years a team led by an Italian forensic pathologist has been on a mission to name them.

“There’s a body that needs to be identified, you identify it – this is the first commandment of forensic medicine,” says Dr Cristina Cattaneo, professor of forensic pathology and anthropology at the University of Milan.

Cattaneo’s obsession is naming the dead. That is normal if a plane crashes in Europe, she says. Why should it be different for migrant travellers?

“There are so many tombstones in European cemeteries with ‘unknown’ written in Italian in place of a name, and the date of death. And that’s it. I think this is tragic. It’s the ultimate insult that someone can receive.”

Cattaneo and her team have opened files for more than 350 missing persons whose families believe they may have died on the shipwreck of 18 April 2015.

“This means 350 families have approached some sort of authority looking for their dead in this incident. Five years have gone by and these people are still looking for their loved ones,” she says.

The people who got on that old boat in Libya came from a dozen African countries, including Senegal, Mauritania, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Mali, Gambia, Somalia and Eritrea. There were Bangladeshis on board too. The man steering the boat, a Tunisian, together with a Syrian, would later be convicted of manslaughter and human trafficking in an Italian court.

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The ill-fated voyage began at dawn on the beach at Garabulli, east of Tripoli. A nameless 20m-long fishing boat, painted a jaunty sky blue, bobbed on the waves.

On its bow was an inscription in Arabic, “Blessed by Allah”.

Ibrahima Senghor had been waiting to get on the vessel since 3am. He had travelled from Senegal to this beach in Libya with other young men from his village, then in the milling crowd of hopeful passengers, he had become separated from them.

“We were in 10 groups of 100 people,” he remembers. “Seven of the groups boarded. I was in the eighth group. More people arrived in a refrigerated truck. They got on the boat too. We could see it was heavily loaded, and then the traffickers announced the boat was full. I said, ‘That’s impossible.’ I insisted I had to go too.”

But the people-smugglers would not let Ibrahima Senghor board. He had paid the equivalent of around $1,000 in local currency, but the traffickers prioritised those who had paid in US dollars. Ibrahima’s friends had boarded early on and probably descended into the hold. He was left on the shore with 300 others, watching the boat depart.

“The boat pulled away. But then it turned around. The captain called out that they were overloaded. The trafficker just ordered him to leave – he said if the captain didn’t go, he would kill him on the spot. The trafficker drew his gun and shot into the air. Until 10am we could still see the boat in the distance.”

Travelling on the deck as the vessel headed for international waters, was Abdirisaq – one of 24 Somalis on board. Desperate to leave Libya, he and his friends had forced their way on at the last moment.

“I was so relieved because I was leaving the Libyan civil war behind,” he remembers.

Listen to Shipwreck on Assignment, on the BBC World Service, on Thursday 24 December
Click here for transmission times, or to listen online
By 2015, after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi, power in Libya was dangerously fractured. Migrants were vulnerable to kidnap – they were often held hostage in horrific conditions and forced to pay large sums of money before being released.

Abdirisaq was not thinking about how seaworthy this vessel was – he knew he was taking a gamble.

“I wasn’t worried about safety,” he says. “I thought we’d have a 50/50 chance – we’d either get to Europe or the boat would sink.”

As they headed into open water, Abdirisaq fell asleep. By the evening, about 100km out to sea and still closer to Libya than to Italy or Malta, the boat began to take on water. The captain put out a distress call.

The European Union had pulled back on its search and rescue operations, so a merchant vessel was the first on the scene, at around 11pm. It was a pitch-black night, and the King Jacob – a huge container ship – switched on its lights. The shape of the small fishing boat was completely obscured by the hundreds of people crowded on the deck. The master of the King Jacob turned off his engines to commence rescue, and the overladen fishing boat attempted to pull up alongside.

The migrants’ boat was unbalanced by the on-deck passengers who panicked and moved towards the side of the boat closest to the King Jacob. And then – inexplicably – the captain accelerated.

“Our boat crashed into the large ship head on,” says Abdirisaq. “We hit the ship more than once. Then we scraped along its side. After that, we couldn’t stay afloat and we capsized.”

Abdirisaq – an excellent swimmer – found himself under the boat and under the water.

“When we were thrown into the sea, people were holding on to me. My clothes were ripped off as I tried to free myself and swim to the surface,” he says.

When he emerged, there was mayhem.

“I could hear a lot of shouting and screaming. People were still trying to hold on to me, so I swam away from the crowd – I was so tired, and I still had so much water inside me. I tried to swim after the big ship. I was about to give up, when they threw down a life belt.”

Utterly exhausted, Abdirisaq managed to climb the ladder up the steep sides of the King Jacob. He was one of only 28 survivors.

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In the early hours of Sunday morning, Guiseppe Pomilla – a volunteer doctor – arrived in the darkness from Sicily on an Italian coastguard vessel.

“There was just a huge silence – nothing moved,” he remembers.

It was not until Pomilla boarded a small dinghy, bringing him closer to the surface of the water, that he was confronted with the sea of half-submerged bodies.

“There were so many, moving up and down with the movement of the waves.”

He and his colleagues grabbed at the floating bodies to see if anyone was still alive. No-one was. Then they heard a scream. With the aid of a lamp, they were able to locate the man and pull him on board.

“He was simply euphoric – he couldn’t stop talking. He asked me if I was Italian, and said that from today he would love Italy for ever.”

Pomilla helped rescue one other migrant that night.

“We thought he was dead. His eyes were open and he didn’t move. Then he grabbed my hand.

“Those two people we rescued… I always wonder if maybe there was someone else alive – somebody who couldn’t scream, or couldn’t move, so we never got to them.”