A Coastguard official broke down as he described taking a “distressing” phone call during the Channel’s deadliest migrant boat sinking.
Search and Rescue coordinator Neal Gibson was questioned at the Cranston Inquiry, which is examining the events surrounding the small boat sinking on 24 November 2021.
A total of 31 people are thought to have died, with 27 bodies identified, one still unidentified, and four people missing and presumed dead.
Mr Gibson took several calls from panicking passengers, including 16-year-old Mubin Rizghar Hussein, as the boat started to take on water.
In transcripts shown to the inquiry, Mr Gibson repeatedly assured Mubin a rescue boat was on its way and would take “less than half an hour”. In reality, it took double that and never found the sinking vessel.
Mr Gibson also told Mubin to stop calling.
He said: “You need to stop making calls, because every time you do, we think there’s another boat out there, and we don’t want to accidentally go chasing for another boat when it’s your boat we’re looking for.”
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Asked why he’d given that instruction, Mr Gibson became emotional, telling the inquiry: “If you don’t understand what’s fully going on and you’re getting ‘we’re all going to die’, it’s quite a distressing situation to find yourself in.
“Sitting at the end of a phone, effectively helpless. You know where they are and you want to get a boat to them, but you can’t.”
Mubin was among those who died. The inquiry said it can’t be certain how many people were on board and there may have been more victims whose whereabouts will never be known.
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The inquiry previously heard Border Force cutter boat Valiant was tasked to respond shortly after 1.30am but it did not leave until 2.22am and took another hour to get to the last location known for the boat, referred to as incident “Charlie”.
The Valiant did not find “Charlie” in its last known location, and instead found a completely different boat 10 minutes later, which it mistakenly believed to be “Charlie”.
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At that point, the search and rescue operation was stood down.
“No-one in the UK was looking for ‘Charlie’, no-one came to their rescue,” said Rory Philips KC, the inquiry’s counsel.
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The inquiry is set to examine a number of potential issues with the response, ranging from chronic under-staffing at HM Coastguard, to Valiant’s long response time.
The oral hearings are scheduled to last until 27 March.
