The Left-to-Die Boat

In March 2011, 72 passengers left the Libyan coast heading in the direction of Italy on board a small rubber boat at the time of NATO’s military intervention in Libya. Despite several distress signals relaying their location, as well as repeated interactions with at least one military helicopter and a military ship, they were left to drift for 14 days. As a result of the inaction of all state actors involved, only nine of the passengers survived. By combining their testimonies with wind and sea-current data as well as satellite imagery, Forensic Oceanography reconstructed the liquid traces of this event, producing a report that served as the basis of several legal complaints.

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In our interview with Dan Haile Gebre, one of the survivors, we tried to depart from formats of witnessing normally associated with humanitarian organizations.

Rather than placing the emphasis on the subjective dimension of his experience, we used various memory aids—such as photographs of naval and aerial assets that were present in the area at the time of the events—to assist him in remembering details that could support the reconstruction of the event, and the identification of the various vessels and aircraft encountered by the vessel while at sea.

According to the survivors, in the early hours of 28 March 2011 their vessel ran of fuel and began to drift aimlessly for the remainder of its trajectory. Where exactly did the boat begin to drift, and what course did it follow?

These are questions that we addressed in collaboration with oceanographer Richard Limeburner (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute). With his help, we were able to reconstruct the trajectory of the boat during its fourteen days of deadly drift, by analysing winds and currents.

According to that reconstruction, the vessel briefly entered the Maltese search and rescue zone, though for the majority of its trajectory it remained within the NATO maritime surveillance area.

Satellite imagery confirmed the presence of a high number of ships in close proximity to the drifting vessel. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite imagery is routinely collected over the Mediterranean Sea for various purposes, including the policing of illegalised migration.

Using these media to document the crime of non-assistance of people in distress at sea thus involved a strategic repurposing of images and surveillance technologies. In this we exercised a ‘disobedient gaze’, one that refuses to disclose clandestine migration but seeks to expose instead the violence of Europe’s border regime.

Optical and SAR satellites are only two among a vast array of sensing technologies—thermal cameras, sea-, air- and land-borne radars, and vessel-tracking technologies—that scan the surface of the sea, turning certain physical conditions into digital data according to specific protocols, and determining conditions of visibility for certain events, objects, or people.

The constant emission and capture of different electromagnetic waves operated by these technologies gives a new material meaning to Fernand Braudel’s metaphor of the Mediterranean as an ‘electromagnetic field’ in terms of its relation to the wider world. These sensing technologies do not simply create a new representation of the sea, but rather constitute a new sea altogether, one that is simultaneously composed of matter and media.

While optical satellite imagery forms images of the Earth’s surface by detecting the solar radiation reflected from targets on the ground, SAR imaging uses an antenna to transmit microwave pulses towards the Earth’s surface. The microwave energy scattered back to the satellite is measured, and an image is formed by utilising the time delay of the returning signals.

Calm sea surfaces appear dark in SAR images, whereas ships reflect most of the radar energy back to the sensor, appearing as bright pixels against a uniform background.

AIS (Automatic Identification System) is a ship-borne transponder system that sends out a signal to coastal or satellite receivers, providing live information regarding the position of all registered vessels. The system is mandatory for large commercial ships, but not for warships and other certain categories of vessel.

Forensic Oceanography analysed AIS data in conjunction with SAR imagery in the attempt to ‘negatively’ identify military ships in the vicinity of the migrants’ vessel, by determining which large vessels were not accounted for in the AIS data.

Inconsistency in the dataset for that period and area—probably due to an absence of recorded data along the Libyan coast—ultimately meant that the AIS data could not be matched satisfactorily with satellite imagery targets. Nevertheless, the data provided a remarkable snapshot of commercial maritime traffic though the Strait of Sicily.

The 1979 International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue (S&R) divided the world’s oceans into search and rescue areas. The countries overseeing each area are responsible for assisting people in distress at sea.

However, the elastic nature of international law has often been strategically mobilized by coastal states to avoid engaging in rescue missions. In the central Mediterranean, in particular, the delimitation of S&R zones has a long and conflict-ridden history. Tunisia and Libya have refrained from defining the boundaries of their S&R zones, while Italy and Malta have overlapping S&R zones and are signatories to different versions of the S&R convention—a situation which has led to repeated stand-offs and tragedies, and certainly contributed to the events of the ‘left-to-die boat’ case.

Our report has been presented in the context of multiple legal cases concerning non-assistance at sea which have emerged from the efforts of a coalition of European NGOs.

The coalition includes: The Aire Centre, Agenzia Habeshia, Associazione Ricreativa e Culturale Italiana (ARCI), Associazione per gli Studi Giuridici sull’Immigrazione (ASGI), Boats4People, Canadian Centre for International Justice, Coordination et initiatives pour réfugiés et immigrés (Ciré), Fédération internationale des ligues des droits de l’Homme (FIDH), Groupe d’information et de soutien des immigrés (GISTI), Ligue belge des droits de l’Homme (LDH-Belgique), Ligue française des droits de l’Homme (LDH-France), Migreurop, Progress Lawyers Network, Réseau euro-méditerranéen des droits de l’Homme (REMDH), and Unione Forense per la Tutela dei Diritti Umani (UFTDU).

Cases have been filed in France, Italy, Belgium, and Spain, while Freedom of Information requests have been submitted in Canada, the US, and the U.K. These initiatives, as well as an investigation by the Council of Europe and by several journalists, have forced states and militaries to release further data about the event.

The facts of the case as present by FO’s report have never been contested, but what official information has been provided in response remains vague and incomplete, and we are still unable to determine legal responsibility for the deaths.

The maps produced by FO in relation to this case have been circulated widely in the international press, in activist circles, and in legal and political documents. Modified, cropped, deformed, misspelled, and redrawn, they have nevertheless spurred discussion around this case and spread that discussion across legal, political and media forums.