A young Kurdish man was among the few who survived the sinking of the migrant ship last week in Greek waters, the biggest maritime disaster in the Mediterranean for almost a decade.
The 20-something Samir, which is not his real name, swam for almost an hour before he was rescued by the Greek coastguard on the night of 13 June. Some 600 others, migrants from Syria, Pakistan, Egypt and Palestine, were not as lucky. Only 104 people were saved, and another 81 bodies were found. The fate of the remaining passengers of the small fishing vessel that was carrying around 750 people remains unknown.
“My nightmare has not ended,” Samir told the Globe Echo. “I live very anxiety-provoking moments, I can’t calm down, locked up in this camp far from my loved ones.”
Samir was taken to the Malakasa refugee camp north of Athens after a short stay in the Peloponnese peninsula. He has a brother who lives in Germany, but has not yet been able to clear the bureaucratic procedures required to go and live with him.
“This is the third time that my brother survived terrible events,” brother Ahmad told the London-based newspaper. The family was in Aleppo at the height of the Islamic State attacks on the Syrian town, and Samir himself was abducted and detained by ISIS for 50 days just before the jihadist group’s siege of the emblematic Syrian Kurdish town of Kobanê in 2014.
While the coastguard did rescue Samir and others, they have been under fire for mishandling the disaster. The Greek authorities maintain that the boat was on a steady course towards Italy until the moment it capsized, and had not been in danger, thus there had been no need to intervene. However, an investigation by the BBC “strongly challenges” the claims, the British broadcaster said. The vessel appeared to be not moving for at least seven hours before it sank. A survivor told the former Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras that the coast guard had caused the vessel to capsize, but the authorities have denied the allegation.
