According to the Greek authorities, The coast guard had located the overloaded boat since Tuesday sailing in international waters south of the Peloponnese. So far, the balance shows 78 deaths and hundreds of wounded.
According to the timetables of the authorities and the activists, the Greek Coast Guard was alerted to the presence of the vessel 47 nautical miles (87 kilometers) southwest of Greece at around 10:00 a.m. on June 13 and capsized around one in the morning the next day.
What exactly happened in the intervening 15 hours remains unclear.. A migrant charity has told the agency Reuters that a person with whom they were in contact and who was on board the ship warned them that it was in danger, but claims that the Greek authorities repeatedly rejected offers of help.
The Coast Guard maintains that it repeatedly offered to assist the trawler via satellite phone and private boats that were sent to the area, but the alleged perpetrators on board refused the offer of help, expressing their desire to continue the voyage to Italy.
[Hasta 100 niños viajaban en la bodega del barco hundido en Grecia donde han muerto 78 personas]
“That ship was not seaworthy and it doesn’t matter what some people on board have said”said Vincent Cochetel, special envoy of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees for the western and central Mediterranean, on Thursday.
For its part, ‘Alarm Phone’, a network of activists that runs a hotline for migrant boats in danger, said in a statement that since Tuesday they had informed the authorities that the boat was in danger.
Surviving passengers reported that the captain abandoned the ship in a small boat before it capsized, activists say.
But the version of the Greek Coast Guard is different. The weather conditions in the area of the accident worsened with strong winds, which made rescue operations difficult, according to what he explained to efe Nikos Alexiua Coast Guard spokesman.
As explained by Alexíu on the private television of SkaiSince Tuesday afternoon, a coast guard vessel has been closely watching the fishing boat that was sailing “at a good pace.”
“A sudden intervention to rescue a ship with so many people could produce a sudden change of cargowhich would cause the ship to sink,” he said. “We stayed close in case they needed us to save them and that’s what we did,” he stressed.
Nine Egyptians arrested
The Greek authorities arrested nine Egyptians on Thursday accused of human trafficking in the framework of the investigations into the shipwreck.
As reported by public television ERT, the nine egyptianswho are among the 104 rescued from the shipwreck, face charges of forming a criminal organization for the purpose of smuggling immigrants.
[Tragedia en Grecia: la posibilidad de encontrar más supervivientes del naufragio disminuye]
According to testimonies from some of those rescued reported by the Greek media, the 30-meter-long fishing boat initially left Egyptian shores, made a stop in eastern Libya and then set sail for Italy.
The overloaded boat, in which between 500 and 700 immigrants traveled according to local mediasank after capsizing southwest of the Greek Peloponnese peninsula early Wednesday morning.
Hans Lejtensexecutive director of Frontex, the border agency of the European Union (EU), went this Thursday to the headquarters of the port authority in the city of Kalamata, where the rescued have been transferred.
“I am here to better understand what happened and to express my solidarity and help to the Greek (Greek Coast Guard) colleagues who did everything possible to save lives,” Leijtens said.
The nine detainees They had a page on the Internet to attract people who want to emigrate to Europe and they charged between 4,000 and 6,000 euros per migrantensures ERT.
