SEA-EYE 4 crew rescues 57 people. Two people did not survive the flight.

On Tuesday afternoon, Alarmphone informed the relevant authorities and the rescue ship SEA-EYE 4 of an emergency at sea. A boat with 59 people called for help in the Maltese search and rescue zone. The crew of the SEA-EYE 4 was able to find the boat on Tuesday evening after a five-hour search at around 7 pm.

It was an overcrowded, two-storey wooden boat. The initial assessment by the crew of the MOCHARA lifeboat revealed that four people were unconscious below deck. In order for the rescue crew to reach them, the people on the upper deck had to be evacuated first. In the end, two people could only be rescued dead.

As the state of health of other people deteriorated drastically, the head of operations, Julie Schweickert, asked the rescue control centres in Rome and Valletta to evacuate four survivors. The seriously injured people showed symptoms of severe fuel poisoning. The victims, who had been below deck on the boat, were unable to escape the toxic fuel vapours and had lost consciousness as a result. The joint medical team from German Doctors e.V. and Sea-Eye e.V. was unable to determine a clear cause of death for the two deceased persons.

“We in the medical team are very sad that two people did not survive the flight. After the urgent evacuation of one patient by helicopter to Malta, we worked intensively all night in the on-board hospital to stabilise the condition of three other seriously injured patients. We are pleased that we were able to do so until the evacuation of the three people in the morning hours on Lampedusa,” says Dr Gerd Klausen, on-board doctor on the SEA-EYE 4 for German Doctors e.V.

The Maltese armed forces evacuated a seriously injured person by helicopter at around 2 a.m. on Wednesday night. The SEA-EYE 4 then followed an Italian coastguard ship to Lampedusa to evacuate three more emergency patients.

“Our operational year started with a very tragic rescue mission. It is important to realise how cruel it is to be trapped below deck and exposed to toxic fumes. The rescue of the survivors and the prompt evacuation of the seriously injured patients saved the lives of most of the people on board. We are incredibly saddened by the loss of two lives for whom all help came too late. Our thoughts are with their families,” says Jan Ribbeck, Head of Search and Rescue operations at Sea-Eye e.V.

The Italian authorities have assigned the SEA-EYE 4 to the Sicilian port of Porto Empedocle to disembark the remaining 53 survivors and two fatalities on board. The SEA-EYE 4 is expected to reach Porto Empedocle at around 10 a.m. on Thursday.

Donations are needed for 9 planned missions in 2024

On the afternoon of Boxing Day (26th December 2023), the crew of the sea rescue ship SEA-EYE 4 rescued a total of 106 people from two different boats. Both boats were spotted by the ship’s crew itself. The distress cases occurred in the Maltese search and rescue zone, south of Lampedusa. The ship’s head of mission then informed the responsible authorities.

Among those rescued are 40 minors. The youngest of them are five and six years old and are accompanied by their parents. A 13-year-old boy from Guinea and a 14-year-old boy from Mali fled alone. The people on both boats stated that they had fled towards Europe via Tunisia on Tuesday night (26th December 2023). They had fled from Eritrea, Guinea, Cameroon, Mali, Gambia and Senegal, among others.

The Maltese Rescue Coordination Centre responsible did not respond. The Italian Rescue Coordination Centre assigned the SEA-EYE 4 to the Italian port of Brindisi to disembark the rescued people. The passage will take around three days. The SEA-EYE 4’s head of mission expects the ship to arrive in Brindisi on Friday afternoon.

The 5th mission of the year ends at the port of Brindisi. One mission was cancelled due to a detention by the Italian coastguard. In total, the SEA-EYE 4 was detained three times in 2023. All three detentions were based on the allegations of a violation of the so-called Piantedosi Law of February 2023. The joint crews of Sea-Eye e.V., German Doctors e.V. and Refugee Rescue nevertheless managed to save 504 lives. The three organisations will continue to work together in the coming year to save as many people as possible from drowning.

“Yesterday, while we were celebrating Christmas, 106 people were rescued from the Mediterranean by the crew of the SEA-EYE 4. As Nour Hanna, our volunteer doctor on board, told us, fortunately none of them were in a critical medical situation. The fact that so many families with young children choose this dangerous escape route makes us realise how important it is to continue our cooperation with Sea-Eye and Refugee Rescue. It guarantees medical care during sea rescues,” said Dr Harald Kischlat, Chairman of German Doctors.

Sea-Eye plans to carry out a total of 9 missions in the new year, as no major shipyard operations need to be taken into account. However, the donations are not yet sufficient to achieve this goal. So far, only the first two missions of the first quarter have been approved by the organisation’s executive board. Further support still needs to be found.

“We have a ship ready to go and a strong team on land and at sea. Now it’s just a matter of being able to finance all the missions in the forthcoming year. We are aware of the increasing political headwinds. However, we will not give up, we will keep relying on the solidarity of our supporters and together we will continue to fight for every single human life,” says Gorden Isler, Chairman of Sea-Eye e.V.

Donate now!

New legal opinion underlines the risk of criminalisation of sea rescue by a draft law of the German government

The rescue ship SEA-EYE 4 left the Italian port of Taranto on Friday night (8 December 2023) and set off on its last mission of the year. This is the ship’s fifth mission of the year. One of a total of three detentions of the ship led to the cancellation of a mission. Sea-Eye appealed against all three detentions before Italian administrative courts. A decision by the courts is still pending in all three cases.

Andreas Krahl, a member of the Bavarian state parliament and nurse, is also on board. This is the second time he has spent the month of December on board the SEA-EYE 4. Krahl is part of the joint medical team of German Doctors e.V. and Sea-Eye e.V. in the on-board hospital of SEA-EYE 4. The Bonn-based aid organisation German Doctors has been working with Sea-Eye for three years and is once again providing the on-board doctor Nour Hanna as medical director of the mission.

“The humanitarian situation at Europe’s external borders is deteriorating. This year, at least 2,500 people have already died while fleeing across the Mediterranean. Our last joint mission with the SEA-EYE 4, in which four people could only be rescued dead, once again brought this sad fact clearly to our eyes. It is therefore all the more important that an experienced doctor from German Doctors, Nour Hanna, is once again on board on this last mission of the SEA-EYE 4 this year. As a paediatrician, she already volunteered on the SEA-EYE 4 last year before Christmas and is also familiar with the situation of refugees in Greece. She also cared for patients at our medical centre in Thessaloniki as a German Doctor. We are very grateful to her and the entire crew for their important volunteer work and wish everyone involved all the best for the mission,” says Dr Harald Kischlat, member of the board of German Doctors e.V.

While the crew of the SEA-EYE 4 is on its way to the operational area, the German Bundestag is discussing the so-called Repatriation Improvement Act. It provides for an amendment to Section 96 of the Residence Act. A new legal opinion by Prof. Dr Aziz Epik (University of Hamburg) and Prof. Dr Valentin Schatz (Leuphana University of Lüneburg) expressly warns of the danger of criminalising civilian sea rescuers through the draft law presented by the Federal Ministry of the Interior.

“The amendment of Section 96 (4) of the Residence Act proposed by the Federal Ministry of the Interior, which will extend to cases of altruistic assistance for unauthorised entry, poses the risk that civilian sea rescuers will be criminalised. Section 96 (4) of the Residence Act refers to the law of the European country of entry, for example Italy, for the question of the unauthorised nature of the entry. We consider that at least some of the rescued people will formally enter the country of disembarkation (for example, Italy) without formal authorisation. Accordingly, Section 96 (4) of the Residence Act would apply. That said, in our opinion, the conduct of civilian sea rescuers during the rescue operation and the transfer of people to a port of disembarkation would be justified as a state of emergency under Section 34 StGB. However, this view is not undisputed and it is also not sufficient to include a corresponding intention of the legislator in the explanatory memorandum to the law, as law enforcement authorities and criminal courts are not bound by such an explanation. We therefore advocate to incorporate at least an explicit exception to the offence in Section 96(4) of the Residence Act, as is already permitted under European law pursuant to Directive 2002/90/EC for all forms of humanitarian assistance,” says Prof. Dr Valentin Schatz, Junior Professor of Public Law and European Law at the Leuphana University of Lüneburg.

In the past, Italian and Maltese authorities have repeatedly questioned whether a distress case involving people fleeing in the Mediterranean is a distress case at all. For example, the Maltese Rescue Coordination Centre asked merchant ships such as the MTS Southport in December 2022 not to rescue people and to change course. The people later rescued by the SEA-EYE 4 included seriously injured people who would not have survived the crossing to Italy.

“In precisely such a case, the draft law makes it possible to initiate criminal proceedings against the Sea-Eye crew. Because if a European authority does not recognise an emergency at sea as such, but the SEA-EYE 4 rescues the people from acute life-threatening danger and then disembarks them in a European port, the German public prosecutor’s office would at least have to investigate whether Sea-Eye acted in accordance with the law and initiate investigations against our crew. This draft law must not come into force because it criminalises crew members and discourages them from providing humanitarian aid on a rescue ship. The Italian strategy of criminalising and frightening sea rescuers must not become the legal standard in Germany,” says Gorden Isler, Chairman of Sea-Eye e.V.

Four bodies handed over to Italian authorities

On Sunday evening, all 48 survivors, including 32 men, 13 women, one child and two babies, were able to disembark from the SEA-EYE 4 in Vibo Valentia. The four bodies of the people who had not survived the dramatic rescue operation on Friday morning (27.10.) were handed over to the Italian authorities.

During the rescue operation, the refugees had fled in their overcrowded rubber boat from the so-called Libyan coast guard, which had harassed the boat with dangerous manoeuvres by its coast guard vessel. In the process, some people had fallen into the water. Three people nearly drowned and their lives were in danger. The medical team managed to stabilise two patients. The third person was a pregnant woman whose unborn baby’s heartbeat could no longer be detected, which meant that a life-threatening situation, if not the death of the child, had to be assumed.  The pregnant woman was handed over to the Italian coast guard off Lampedusa after they refused to carry out an urgent medical evacuation by helicopter.

A mother identified a twelve-year-old girl as her daughter among the four bodies yesterday. Her nine-year-old brother is also on board. A young man who nearly drowned identified a deceased woman as his wife. At least two people have been missing friends since the encounter with the so-called Libyan coast guard.

“The actions of the so-called Libyan Coast Guard on Friday showed once again how dangerous this militia is. They are not sea rescuers. They are not about protecting life. We document and publish their ruthlessness and incompetence again and again, but nothing changes. The cooperation of the EU states with these violent militias must finally be stopped,” says Gorden Isler, chairman of Sea-Eye e. V.

Press release on the rescue operation (27.10.23): https://sea-eye.org/en/pregnant-woman-fights-for-her-life-on-sea-eye-4-italy-sends-no-help/ 

Italian coastguard conducted nine-hour port state control

On Friday, the SEA-EYE 4 arrived at the port of Brindisi assigned by the Italian Coast Guard. 51 people were able to leave the ship, having been rescued earlier in the night from Tuesday to Wednesday in the Libyan search and rescue zone. Police, 118 rescue workers, volunteers of the Red Cross and civil defence were on the scene, according to Brindisi Report.

“We are very grateful to the local emergency forces of Brindisi. The disembarkation of the rescued people went smoothly, very committed and dignified,” said Gorden Isler, chairman of Sea-Eye e.V..

Still on Friday evening, the harbour master of Brindisi announced a port state control by the Italian coast guard for Saturday. In recent years, such port state controls have repeatedly led to the detention of sea rescue ships and to disputes between the Italian coast guard and the German flag state authorities.

The port state control began on Saturday morning at around 9 am. Two inspectors from the Italian Coast Guard boarded the ship and conducted an intensive technical and nautical inspection. The crew had to demonstrate several drills. These included abandoning the ship in an acute emergency and fire fighting training. The technical and nautical equipment, the ship’s certificates, the crew’s employment contracts, the crew quarters, the survivors’ accommodation, the shipboard hospital and the engine room were intensively checked. In total, the port state control lasted nine hours and ended at around 6pm.

“In an incomparably intensive control, the inspectors found no reasons for the vessel to be detained. The Italian Coast Guard thus confirms to us that the ship and crew are acting in accordance with international regulations. We are proud of our crew and our nautical-technical department. Now the ship can continue the ongoing mission, leave the port and immediately return to the area of operation to save lives,” Isler continues.