Harrowing first-person account of English Channel boat disaster

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – On the morning of October 27, a small, overloaded boat carrying 22 people set off from the French coast. Their destination was the United Kingdom, but they never made it. The boat capsized in the English Channel, killing an Iranian-Kurdish family of five – Rasul Iran Nejad, his wife Shiva Mohammad Panahi, and their children, nine-year-old Anita, six-year-old Armin, and one-year-old Artin.  

This is the story of one of the survivors. 

The 26-year-old Kurdish migrant from Sardasht, a university graduate, Iran told his story to Rudaw English via WhatsApp on condition of anonymity. 


“We were in the Dunkirk Jungle and the smuggler, a man by the name of Sadegh, called us and said come to Calais. I paid one euro for a bus to get to Calais. Others paid more. We got to Calais at around 5:30 on Monday evening. We waited until 7pm when Sadegh, the junior smuggler, turned up. Sadegh worked with Rauf, the main smuggler. Both were from our area in Kurdistan [northwestern Iran].

It was raining slightly on Monday evening. We took a bus ride inside Calais and we stopped at another stop to catch another bus. But the bus had already departed. We walked for eight hours, mostly on a dirt road, and reached the place at around 4am on Tuesday. It was a place in between Calais and Dunkirk. We saw two police cars. They asked us where we were going and we replied to Dunkirk.

The smuggler was on the phone with the family [Rasul Iran Nejad] and he was telling them to take a taxi. We waited until around six. That was when three police officers arrived with torches. We were by the shore, but they did nothing, just said “good night.” Then they left us there. It was obvious that we were waiting for a boat. They must have known we were waiting for a boat, but they said nothing.

It was around 6:30 that the family of Rasul [Iran Nejad] arrived. We were 21 people from Sardasht and one called Mohsen from the north of Iran, a Persian. We were 18 men, one woman, and three children.

The smuggler said, ‘I will bring you lifejackets,’ but he did not. The smuggler Sadegh was around 35 years old. I left Iran around two months ago and he was introduced to me through intermediaries. I have spent around 13,000 euros as of now.

The people on the boat had paid somewhere between 2,500 to 3,000 pounds to cross to the other side [Britain]. Ours was not a dingy. It was a boat with a steering wheel. We got into the boat at around 7:50 [Tuesday morning]. I sat in front and the family was next to me. The mother was holding on to the young one [Artin]. Only five had red lifejackets. I did not have a lifejacket.

We were in the boat for forty minutes. The weather was calm and the only problem we had was there were too many of us. This was because the smuggler wanted to collect more money from the passengers. I think the capacity was around 14 people, but we were 22 people. 

We were happy and we were eating. But as we gradually moved forward in the water, the water started getting into the boat because we were too heavy. Initially we started pouring the water back into the sea with buckets, but more and more water got into the boat and the back side became heavy and was becoming submerged.

Then people started panicking and started screaming. I dialed 999 twice and the first time I spoke to a man, but I could not understand him enough, even though I speak some English. I tried to say we were in the sea and we are too many on the boat, but I don’t know how much they understood. I think he was asking where we were, but we did not know.  Words can’t describe the extent of panic in the boat.

The screaming was too much and I could see the mother holding onto her baby with the other two children next to her. The mother and children were screaming and I was powerless. There was nothing we could do. I saw death with my own eyes. All of us saw death with our own eyes. 

As I dialed the second time, the boat capsized and my phone dropped into the sea. It was chaos. Some were holding onto those who had lifejackets. As I was swimming away from the boat, a few were hanging onto those who had lifejackets. One by the name of Yousuf Khezri, who had a lifejacket and did not know how to swim, was shouting “Please let me go! Don’t drown me with you! Please let me go!” as another one had grabbed his neck and was holding onto him. 

Yousif Khezri is missing alongside Shoresh Souri and the child Artin. There was no sign of the children and their mother. The boat flipped a few times and I had to swim away from the boat because it was too dangerous. I knew how to swim as I studied sport at the University of Tabriz back in Iran.

I saw the father Rasul [Iran Nejad] by the boat. He shouted for us to go and help the children underneath the boat, but no one dared to dive in. We were too afraid. He took a breath, went under the boat, but came up again. He was tired, but he dived again and went under the boat. Then after a while his body appeared, floating next to us. I saw it with my own eyes. He was exhausted and died for his children.

When the situation became calmer, I swam back towards the boat as I was getting tired. I was in the water from around 8:50 to 9:20. A white boat passed by and there was a woman and two men in the boat. They pulled Mobin [one of the migrants], who was I think 16 years of age, from the water. They called, I think the police. Another boat, a fishing boat, passed by and the people onboard saved Hemin and three others, including me, pulling us from the water. 

We knew each other because everyone on the boat, except for Mohsen, was from Sardasht. Six of us on the boat were from village of Bejwe in Sardasht. We are all alive. Sardasht is a border town and people rely on the border crossings, but they have been closed so there was no work. The one who has been arrested, Mohsen, is not actually a smuggler. He is from the north of Iran and the smugglers forced him to drive the boat.

Now there are 15 of us from the boat living in the Jungle again. We are in a bad psychological state, but there is no help. We have no food or anything. In total there are around 500 people in Jungle now and around 300 of them are from Sardasht.”

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