Dutch MP to interview Maltese officials over claims they ignored distress call

The Eritrean priest who denounced to the world that a boat carrying African an migrants in the Mediterranean was ignored by NATO military assets, has told a Council of Europe inquiry that a military helicopter dropped water to the migrants but then vanished and that a naval vessel simply ignored them.

“I spoke to the migrants, I alerted the authorities. People were on that boat waving babies in the air when the naval vessel passed, and yet they still died of hunger and thirst,” Fr Moses Zerai, an Eritrean priest based in Rome, said.

Zerai and three of only nine survivors of the boat trip were interviewed in Rome by the Dutch MP Tineke Strik, who is heading a Council of Europe inquiry into claims.

Strik said she is planning interviews with officials from NATO and the Maltese government, which the Italian coastguard says was alerted to the boat’s plight.

“I still see the people dying before me when I sleep,” said Abu Kurke, 23, an Ethiopian survivor who met Strik. “The helicopter gave us water but did not save us – are we not human beings?” Kurke had spent 12 months in a Libyan jail before attempting the dangerous sea crossing.

NATO has denied a report claiming its military units failed to save dozens of migrants fleeing north Africa by boat which had been adrift in the ocean for 16 days, leading to the deaths of 61 people.

British newspaper The Guardian said despite a distress call from the boat to the Italian coastguard and a military helicopter and NATO warship, no rescue effort was attempted. It said the boat, carrying 72 people including women, children and political refugees, ran into trouble after leaving Tripoli, the Libyan capital, for the Italian island of Lampedusa on March 25.

By the time the vessel drifted ashore at Zlitan, Libya, on 10 April, all but 11 passengers were dead, and another died after being imprisoned by forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi, the country’s leader.

The paper said the migrants used a satellite phone to call Fr Moses Zerai, an Eritrean priest in Rome who runs a refugee rights organisation, who then alerted the Italian coastguard.