ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The body of a Kurdish migrant who drowned in the English Channel in November along with 26 other people is set to arrive in Tehran on Monday night, his brother told Rudaw English, as families of the victims and a humanitarian organization begin legal proceedings against officials on either side of the Channel.
The plane from France carrying the body of Sirwan Alipour is set to arrive at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Airport at 10:40pm (Tehran time) on Monday with his family traveling for 12 hours from their home city of Sardasht to Tehran in order to receive their son, his brother Saman Alipour told Rudaw English on Monday.
Sirwan was one of around 34 passengers on a dinghy that capsized in the English Channel on November 24, as it attempted to cross from France to the United Kingdom. He had left Iran sometime in September, spending five days in a boat travelling from Turkey to Italy, and was in Calais for around one and a half months before making the deadly journey.
The Paris prosecutor’s office on Tuesday announced that they had identified all but one of the 27 migrants who drowned in the English Channel disaster, among which were 17 Kurds. Relatives of the dead continue to claim that there were 33 people on board the doomed boat, meaning that there are four missing bodies on top of the two survivors.
“We knew the boat was theirs from the start, but we were trying to find his body and bring him back before [the] Christmas break, because if we could not do it before then, it would be delayed,” Saman said via WhatsApp, adding that they had contacted the Iranian consulate in France through their local parliament member and had finished the paperwork required for the return.
Saman, who arrived in Tehran on Sunday night along with his father, mother, and other relatives, said that they had to go to Sulaimani in the Kurdistan Region for their family to send DNA samples to Paris, via the Summit (Lutka) Foundation for Refugee and Displaced Affairs.
Related: Families cling to final messages from those feared drowned in English Channel
The repatriation of Sirwan’s body comes as the French humanitarian organization Utopia 56 has launched legal proceedings, filing a complaint for “manslaughter and failure to provide assistance” to the prosecutor of the Judicial Tribunal of Paris, against the Maritime Prefect of the Channel and the North Sea, the director of Cross Gris Nez (the French organization of maritime safety), and the British Coast Guard, according to a statement from the human rights organization on Monday.
“We must learn the lessons and consequences, including on the criminal level of the sinking of November 24, 2021 so that, never again, do these tragedies happen,” the statement read.
Utopia 56 are also calling on the legal investigation opened into the tragedy in France to focus on all circumstances of the drownings, including the role of French and British authorities, rather than primarily the role of people smugglers as is currently the focus.
In the UK, according to the French publication Le Monde, proceedings were launched against the British government by families of two of the victims from the Kurdistan Region on Saturday, charged by Maria Thomas of Duncan Lewis Solicitors.
The two survivors and relatives of deceased migrants who were tracking the boat’s movement on live location have accused British authorities of ignoring repeated calls for help from the migrants as they were reportedly in trouble in British waters.
Earlier this month, another Le Monde report corroborated these claims, stating that the migrants had called for help and, according to a judicial source, the statements made by these two survivors were confirmed by detailed telephone records extracted by the police.
UK authorities have as yet not opened an investigation into the deaths, so the London-based firm says that the first step is to request that the British government open a public inquiry, “to determine whether the acts or omissions of the British agencies involved in the coordination of the search and rescue mission on November 24 resulted in violations of the European Convention on Human Rights.”
According to the lawyer charged with the case, independent expertise in sea rescue submitted to her has indicated “that there may have been serious failures, which could have contributed to the significant loss of life.” A response is expected from the British government by January 3, 2022. Rudaw English has approached Duncan Lewis for comment, although this was not immediately available.
The British Home Office is attempting to make the practice of refoulement (the forcible return of refugees or asylum seekers) legal, despite international maritime and human rights law. At the beginning of this month, the government’s proposed Borders and Nationality Bill passed in the House of Commons, and will continue to be debated in the House of Lords early next year.
A migrant support group launched a legal challenge against the home secretary’s plans to push-back dinghies in the Channel last month, arguing that it breaks British and international maritime law which states that nobody can endanger other boats at sea.
The British voluntary organization Channel Rescue, founded in 2020 to campaign for the safety of migrants, has brought pre-trial action against the policy it calls “life-threatening, inhumane and unlawful.”
The Home Office commander in charge of stopping English Channel migrant crossings earlier this month told a UK parliamentary committee that he could not disclose to a UK parliamentary committee whether the boat that attempted to cross the Channel on November 24 made contact with UK authorities prior to the drowning of the people on the boat.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) announced earlier this month that they will return the bodies of the Kurdish migrants to the Region, and Rudaw understands that this will be in the coming few days. While the body of Sirwan and the other identified victims are set to arrive, however, families of those still missing continue to claim that four bodies from the disaster remain lost at sea.
Additional reporting by Alannah Travers
