Exclusive: Migrant survivor says British coastguard ignored call for help

CALAIS, France - One of two known survivors of the Wednesday night English Channel boat disaster and a relative of two of the migrants have accused the British coastguard of ignoring repeated calls for help from the drowning migrants while they were reportedly in British waters. In an exclusive interview with Rudaw on Sunday, the survivor detailed the horror as he watched as many as 31 people drown, one-by-one.

"The right side of the boat was losing air. Some people were pumping air into it and others were bailing the water from the boat," said 21-year-old Mohammed Shekha Ahmad, a Kurd who resided in Qaladze town in Kurdistan Region's Sulaimani province until about six weeks ago. "Then after a bit, we called the French police and said, 'help us, our pump stopped working.'"

"Then [we] sent [our] location to the French police and they said, 'you're in British waters'... we called Britain. They said call the French police," Mohammed recounted, visibly distraught from his near death experience. "Two people were calling - one was calling France and the other was calling Britain." The migrants made their calls in English. 

A relative of two of the victims, Taha (not his real name), who was in contact with them via Facebook on Tuesday night, tracking their location live, also alleges that the migrants reached British waters. “Forty-five minutes before they drowned, they called and said they were in British waters but could not move. They drowned in British waters and the waves took the bodies to French waters,” the relative, who does not want to be identified for legal reasons, told Rudaw via telephone.

“I believe they were five kilometers inside British waters,” he said. Asked if his relative on the boat called British police, he replied “100 per cent, 100 percent and they [British police] even said they would come [to the rescue].” 

Taha said the boat was in French waters when the problems started, but the smuggler forced them to continue moving towards Britain for another 45 minutes. Taha tracked the boat’s movement live on Facebook when the dinghy’s engine stopped working. “I had their live location, but you know the live location is only available for an hour,” he said.

Rudaw English on Sunday evening emailed the British Foreign Office and Maritime and Coastguard Agency to ask if they logged a distress call on the night of the incident. The Home Office responded on behalf of the British government, disputing the account and a spokesperson said in an email to Rudaw English that the incident happened in French territorial waters. The allegations are “completely untrue,” the spokesperson wrote on Monday morning. “Officials here confirmed last night that the incident happened well inside French Territorial Waters, so they led on the rescue effort, but deployed a helicopter in support of the search and rescue mission as soon as we were alerted.” He also advised Rudaw to contact the Coastguard.

Rudaw English again emailed the Coastguard on Monday morning, asking if, six days after the incident, the agency had investigated whether there was a distress call on the night of the incident, and is yet to receive a detailed answer.

Mohammed is adamant that the boat had reached British waters. "The British police didn't help us and the French police said, 'you're in British waters, we can't come,'" he recounted. "Then, as we were slowly drowning, the people lost hope and let go. Then the waves took us to back to France."

"Britain should have come on board [and rescued us] because we drowned in the [English] Channel," he said as he sobbed. "They didn't help us or do anything for us."

Rudaw has pieced together the journey of the migrant boat based on testimony of the survivor and the relative who was in contact with two people on the boat that night. 

Mohammed, who survived the harrowing ordeal, appears visibly distraught and fails to remember the age of his sister who was the motivation for his journey. He hoped to make money in the UK to pay for her treatment. This was not Mohammed’s first attempt to reach Britain. He had tried a few days earlier and been rescued by a French vessel. 

The group of 33 or 34 migrants was driven by bus to a location on the Dunkirk coastline around 6:00pm local time, Tuesday evening. The migrants were mostly from Iraqi Kurdistan - 15 Kurds from the Peshdar and Betwin area in Sulaimani province, according to Mohammed. Four to five of the group were from Somalia, four Kurds from Iran, one Vietnamese, and two Egyptians. There were four others whose nationalities Mohammed did not know. The passengers included a 3 or 4-year-old girl and a number of women, one of whom was a 24-year-old going to Britain to join her fiancé. 

Mohammed said there were 33 migrants in the group that had been passed around between up to six smugglers before they boarded the ill-fated dinghy. The second witness, Taha, is certain that there were 34 people on the boat and five bodies are still unaccounted for. “There were foreign people too, who spoke good English. Even the 15-year-old Kurdish girl from Darbandikhan spoke good English,” Taha said, based on his conversation with his relatives.

On the dinghy was a young Kurdish man by the name of Shakar Ali, who would send the last voice message of the voyage on that fateful day.

Mohammed said he was a construction worker in Iraqi Kurdistan before he decided to go to Britain just over a month ago so he could make money to help pay the $70,000 his sister needs to travel to India for medical treatment for fused discs in her spine. He said the boat set off sometime between 8:00 to 10:00 pm, local time. Taha, closely following his relatives’ progress online, confirmed the timing, saying that the dinghy went into the water at around 9:00 pm on November 23.

“They left Dunkirk and it took them three hours before they arrived on the Calais-Dover line. I was expecting them to arrive [in the UK] at 2:00 am [Wednesday morning],” Taha told Rudaw English. From the beginning, he was worried about his relatives’ safety and whether the boat they were in was seaworthy. “The dinghy was old and decaying,” he said.

Taha declined to speak on the record, saying he feared he could be labeled a “smuggler” if he went public with his statements. 

The sea was calm and the boat traveled for several hours, an Egyptian man driving, according to Mohammed, before problems began with the dinghy, or “tube” in Kurdish. 

“They started experiencing tube problems around 1:30 British time,” said Taha. “I was in contact with them, talking until 2:40.”

Taha accused two smugglers of forcing the migrants to continue moving for another 45 minutes to reach British waters, even as the dinghy was leaking air. 

Water started seeping into the boat and migrants frantically worked to bail it out, Mohammed recalled. He said they saw a ship and some of the passengers wanted to approach it and be rescued, but others wanted to continue and reach British shores.

As water slowly started to overwhelm the boat, passengers began panicking and held their lit-up phones in the air hoping they would be spotted by a passing vessel, Taha said. But no more ships passed. Sometime between 2:15 and 2:45am, the engine stopped working. Taha’s relatives had British SIM cards in their phones and according to Taha the network connection that night was very good and clear.

When the engine failed, Taha advised his relative to persuade the others to turn around and return to France. “They were five kilometers inside British waters,” Taha said, tracking them on Facebook. “I told them to turn around but the smuggler told them to proceed.”

Shakar Ali, one of the migrants, sent a last audio message to a relative. “Honest to God… we are in British and French waters. We don’t know which one of them is coming to [rescue us]. I’m throwing away my mobile. If you don’t hear from me, that means we are in Britain and if I return to France, then I’ll call you myself,” he said in the voice message which Rudaw obtained a copy of. 

The decision to throw their mobiles phones into the water appears to have been a conscious one, according to people familiar with the journey. Most of the migrants, in particular the Kurds, have relatives in the UK and had been in touch with them throughout the journey. This call log would show on their phones. “You know they called relatives and friends using the phone so in the future when the phone is seized [by police] it would cause problems for their families,” Taha explained why the migrants tossed their phones. Neither the migrants nor the families want to be considered a smuggler. 

As the boat drifted and lost more air, the passengers, including children, fell into the water. They clung to the deflated dinghy and each other. Throughout the dark night, as the half-submerged dinghy floated in the English Channel back towards France, everyone held on tight, but their energy gave out when dawn broke. 

"Everyone could take it until sunrise, then when the light shone, no one could take it anymore and they gave up on life," Mohammed said. One-by-one, they let go of each other and the boat. Most of the group was dead by the time they were found by a French ferry, reportedly alerted by two French fishermen. Two of the migrants died in hospital, he said.

Rudaw has managed to identify a number of the dead migrants from the Kurdistan Region.

"A guy from Ranya was with me," Mohammed recalled. The two young Kurdish men were around the same age and promised they would not let the other go. At one point, while they were in the water, his friend asked Mohammed to let go of his hand. "I said, I won't let go of your hand. Then he said, 'I'll go in front of you.' I didn't see him again."

French police later showed him the photo of his friend's dead body and he recognized him immediately. Mohammed also recognized photos of a family with a 3-year-old child from Darbandikhan in Sulaimani. "This is the little girl. They were with us," he said.

"I saw death with my own eyes. I was thinking only about my dad and my mum," he said.

Taha is also distraught about the loss of his relatives. “What happened is a crime, it’s not destiny or God’s will. It’s a crime committed by the two countries,” he said. 

Rudaw English has reached out to French authorities for comment. 

Some relatives have provided DNA samples to French authorities and they are waiting for their loved ones to be identified.

The cries of his fellow migrants are still vivid in Mohammed's mind, screaming and crying, "Please God, rescue us! Please God, rescue us!" but he still hopes to make it to Britain, willing to sacrifice his life for his sister.

Mohammed's father told Rudaw English he was grateful his son was alive and he "wished that the others had survived too."


Znar Shino reported from Calais and Fazel Hawramy and Hannah Lynch from Erbil.