“My sister died on the boat”

After a week’s wait, they put to sea in a cheap rubber dinghy (the promised fishing boat had failed to materialise). The waves were so high, everyone was quickly soaked. Somehow, Omo “drowned in the boat”. As Jennifer told me the story, she could not stop weeping. “Omo was too scared of the boat,” she explained.

The dark-blue body bag was yet another vivid reminder that the Mediterranean is the world’s most lethal border crossing. More than 6,584 people have died over the past two years, according to the International Organization for Migration, two-thirds of all migrant deaths.

Every month, tens of thousands of people like Omo and Jennifer flee the Libyan coast for Europe in rubber dinghies operated by ruthless smugglers. They die from drowning when boats capsize, from dehydration and asphyxiation after being packed in like sardines.

Cast adrift: the crew of the Phoenix pull up beside a traffickers’ craft crammed with migrants off the coast of Libya

Every so often there is a huge shipwreck, such as the one on August 27, when two boats carrying about 500 migrants sank after leaving Zuwara in Libya. For days afterwards, bodies washed up on the shore. Back in April, a shipwreck off the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa killed about 800. Each time, the world cries out that something must be done, but still the migrants come. Last year, 170,000 people made the journey to Italy; 131,000 have already come in the first nine months of this year.

Last month, I spent five days on a rescue boat, the Phoenix — one of four private boats that operate on the edge of Libyan waters rescuing migrants along with the Italian coastguard and support from at least five naval ships, from Britain, Ireland, Croatia, Belgium and Germany.

The day we found Omo Festus was my fourth day at sea after sailing out of the Grand Harbour of Malta. All that week the weather had been bad — the blue, glassy Mediterranean beloved of summer holidays was gun-grey and choppy. “The smugglers know these seas — they won’t put boats out in this,” said our captain, Marco Cauchi, a grizzled former Maltese army officer. That morning, a force-5 wind was blowing up a 7ft swell and even our reinforced, 136ft converted trawler was tossing. Cauchi said it was too dangerous for migrants to cross. But then, just before 6am, the call came.

“They must be desperate,” Cauchi said, as he set our course towards them and the Libyan shoreline. We were about 1½ hours away and for a long while I strained to see anything. Then, there it was — a tiny, dark oblong on the horizon, rising and falling in and out of sight with the waves. As we got nearer, I could see it was a grey dinghy, perhaps 28ft long, packed with more than 100 people, their faces twisted into a mixture of hope and despair. It was perilously low in the water. At the front was a woman holding up a baby. Marco’s gruff deputy, John Hamilton, 49, half-Scottish, half-Maltese, set off toward them in a rigid inflatable boat (Rib) with two crew and a doctor from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which runs the ship’s clinic. They manoeuvred to the back of the dinghy and held up a megaphone to shout: “Can anyone speak English?”

“Yes!” came the reply.

“You are safe now!” Hamilton yelled.

Immediately, everyone started standing up and trying to jump from the back, nearly capsizing the whole thing. “Keep calm!” Hamilton shouted. “Sit down, don’t stand!”

The crew handed out bright orange life-jackets, then started disembarkation from the stern. “If we draw up alongside, they all come to one side and tip the whole thing,” he explained. Since it started rescue operations in August last year, the Phoenix has rescued more than 11,600 people. One day in June, it was among a flotilla that rescued 2,000.

Hamilton said this was one of the roughest seas in which they had made a rescue. Three weeks earlier, they had gone to the aid of a sinking fishing boat full of migrants, where 49 dead bodies had been found in the hold, all asphyxiated. This time, everyone was safe. Hamilton managed to instil calm and took 132 people off, about 20 at a time, the oldest a man in his forties, the youngest a three-month-old baby.

Once on the deck of the Phoenix, they were greeted by staff from MSF, who checked them for knives and handed each of them a bag containing two bottles of water, a towel, protein bars, a pair of socks and a white plastic jumpsuit. After more than eight hours on the open seas, all of them were dripping wet and shivering. Some were wearing Manchester City or Chelsea football shirts, and many had soiled their clothes from fear.

Disoriented and dehydrated, most then just fell on the deck. Some began to vomit from all the seawater they had swallowed. Some were limping, feet badly cut by the nails used to secure plan

Ghost ship: on the Phoenix, exhausted migrants are given protective white jumpsuits, water, a towel, protein bars and socks

ks in the dinghy.

Migrants are treated like animals and beaten in Libya, and often arrive with broken bones that are not set properly. Some have stab wounds. Dr Simon Bryant of MSF sat on a box and started dressing and cleaning wounds. “What took you so long to rescue us?” one man demanded. “We were on that boat eight hours and called Rome hours ago.”

“These days, none of the boats makes it all the way to Italy,” our captain explained. “The smugglers give them the number of the MRCC [Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre] in Rome to call and they all get rescued just outside Libyan waters.”

The packed deck soon looked like a gathering of all the troubled nations of Africa. It is often thought that the migrants taking the sea route to Europe tend to be sub-Saharan Africans fleeing poverty — economic migrants, not refugees, so ineligible for asylum. At first sight, this group seemed to fit that profile. All but two were men and mostly Gambians and Senegalese, as well as a few Nigerians and a handful from Sierra Leone, Mali and Ghana. There was also a Libyan and four Syrians from Idlib, who had travelled for eight months via Egypt, fleeing Islamic extremists who had taken their city.

As I listened to their stories, however, the complexity of the migrant issue soon became clear. Ruth Wangui, 31, from Kenya, who had already travelled 5,000 miles before getting on the boat, said she was fleeing female genital mutilation. She seemed old to be still facing that threat — most victims are young girls. “In my culture it’s very serious,” she said. “I ran away before to avoid, but the people of my area do not give up, they say I am not pure.”

As for the Gambians, we might associate their country with holidays and tabloid stories of older women in search of toy boys, but for them it is a brutal dictatorship. Elabin, 17, showed me a jagged scar on his arm from a broken bottle. “We are from the wrong tribe,” he shrugged. “We have no good government.”

Yahya Jammeh, the military ruler who seized power in 1994, is an old-style African strongman who boasts that he will rule for a billion years. His henchmen are known for arbitrary executions, the disappearance of opponents and even gunning down schoolchildren. Elabin said he had been working since he was about eight. “I lost my dad when I was three, my mum wasn’t strong. I dropped out of school and went to the city to make money, but it wasn’t enough. I was harassed.” Three years ago, he went to Libya having heard there was money to be made. Instead, he found war and chaos. “There, they keep arresting you. Police or militias put you in detention centres and demand money — 700 dinar [£340] — to get out. You end up dying there. My friend was kidnapped and disappeared. The only way out was the boat.”

A British nurse, Alison Criado-Perez, checks the refugees

He had paid 600 dinar for his passage, less than the 1,000 dinar most paid. “Child’s fare,” he laughed.

Another Gambian, Ahmad Gitteh, 16, knew what he wanted from his new life: “I want to be a striker for Man City,” he said, showing me his Sergio Agüero shirt. “I love Premier League football!” He said he had gone to Libya when he was 14 with his father, who was working there as a teacher. When the security situation worsened, his father returned to Gambia, promising to come and get him, but he never returned. “Libya is a nightmare,” Gitteh said. “They come with guns and say, ‘Stop!’ and take your money, your phone. In Tripoli, you can die any time.” He said he had paid 35,000 Gambian dalasi (about £590) to traffickers, who took him to Tripoli, then the coastal town of Garabulli to wait for a boat in a big compound with more than 200 people.

“I heard of drownings, but I couldn’t see any other way,” he said. “It’s like if your house is burning and the only way out is to jump from a high window, even if you might die in the fall. We could see the boat was too small, but they were beating everyone to get on,” he said, showing me marks where he had been beaten. “Lots of people fell in the sea and couldn’t get on, particularly the women. The boat was small, going up and down. I was worried the air would go out.”

For Yahya Abdallah, 21, a would-be fashion designer from Ghana, it was his fourth attempt. An earlier boat capsized and he had swum for his life. He’d left his home country nine months ago because there was no work. “My father died, there were no opportunities — the light always off, no electricity.” He had borrowed about £1,000 to get to Libya. “The journey across the desert, through Niger, was very dangerous. If the truck breaks down in a sandstorm then you just walk, walk, the sun burns you, and there is no water to drink, and you are so hungry, you die. I saw bodies piled up.”

Libya was even worse. One of his friends argued with the “master” — he was doing casual building work — “then, in the morning, he and another man were dead”.

That was when he decided to leave. A friend in Germany told him how to get there on WhatsApp. He paid a trafficker 1,000 dinar (£475) and was taken to a tiny boat packed with 200 people. “There were high waves and we were taking in water, then the motor stopped working. We were very tired and praying. Only God saved us.”

Back on shore, cold and wet, they were told they would bring two boats the next night. “Instead, we saw they had cheated us and they brought only one small one,” he said. “They were beating people and many fell and didn’t get in — most of the women and kids.” The boat had no pilot; the smugglers simply gave them a compass and the number of the MRCC in Rome.

When we rescued them, they had been at sea for about nine hours and had drifted 36 miles from shore. Most of the people were asleep, but Yahya was excited. “I have a lot of ideas in my head, so when I get to Germany I can draw flowers and designs for your shirt!” He started clapping and singing, and others joined in.

Watching was Alison Criado-Perez, 65, a British nurse who works as MSF’s medical director on the boat. “The awful thing is, they get on the boat and are so happy, they think it’s over and they are off to this land of bread and roses,” she said. “They have no idea what awaits them.”

Clambering among the migrants, checking their needs, was a blonde Italian woman, Regina Catrambone, 39, in rubber boots and hair tied back under a baseball cap. A millionaire who could be enjoying a leisurely life on Malta, she now spends her time cleaning vomit on the ship and changing people into clean clothes that she gets from collections at church. While European leaders are bickering over what to do about migrants, she and her American husband, Christopher, 33, have spent millions of dollars on their own private rescue mission, saving thousands of people from drowning.

“It all started with a winter coat floating in the sea,” Christopher Catrambone told me earlier this year, when I first met them in Malta, where they now live. Catrambone’s business was prospering and, in July 2013, he chartered a luxury yacht with a captain, Marco Cauchi. They stopped on the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa to visit Rabbit Beach, one of the world’s most beautiful beaches, and as they set sail after a day of swimming and sunbathing, they spotted a beige coat in the warm blue waters.

“What’s that doing there?” Catrambone asked Cauchi. “It’s from a dead migrant, obviously,” Cauchi replied. “This moral dilemma started to sink in,” said Catrambone. “We’re out here enjoying our holiday in these waters, which are paradise for us, but for others they are hell.”

Most people would have gone home and done nothing, but this couple knew they could do something. Christopher had lost his home in New Orleans to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and, after a stint on a Caribbean island as a fraud investigator, he’d moved to Italy, met Regina, and made a fortune setting up a company providing insurance and medical care for contractors in conflict zones such as Afghanistan and Iraq. They relocated to Malta. “My business is rescuing people,” he said.

When they told Cauchi about their idea of a rescue ship, he said they were crazy. But over the next few months they bought a 136ft former Canadian fishing trawler, the Phoenix, with a 15ft-deep hull so it would be very stable, sailed it from America and fitted it out with fast Ribs as rescue vessels, a clinic, and hired doctors and nurses.

“They wanted to rape us, so we ran away”: the Nigerian sisters Precious and Peace say they were trafficked to Libya, locked up and forced to clean for their masters

Their first rescue was on August 30 last year. After six days at sea, they were called by the MRCC in Rome to save a dinghy full of Africans. But from up on their bridge they spotted another boat — a small fishing trawler of Syrians that was capsizing.

“There were so many people hanging out, you couldn’t see the boat,” said Catrambone. “Women were holding out babies and pleading, ‘Please take them!’”

Their first passenger was a one-week-old baby. “That day changed my life,” said Catambrone. “I was so happy we were able to save everyone. Not one dead or injured. It was 227 people, but it felt like a million.”

To their astonishment, among the migrants were poets, writers and lawyers who had fled the ancient Syrian city of Aleppo. The migrants were transferred to Italian naval ships. After their second rescue a week later, of about 400 Syrians, the captain of the Italian naval ship San Giusto presented his cap to Catrambone.

Today, the cost of running the Phoenix amounts to about €500,000 a month.

We were still settling people on the Phoenix from the first rescue when the second call came. Another dinghy was in trouble, this time 15 miles offshore from Tripoli. When we arrived — so close to the Libyan capital that we could see the buildings on the shoreline — Hamilton and his men set off again on the Rib, returning quickly with the first batch. That was when we saw the body bag.

There was silence as it was brought on board. Who was it? What had happened? One by one, 124 people clambered on board and packed into the lower deck of the Phoenix. This was a very different group to the first. About 25 of them were women, two of them with babies, and they huddled miserably in gold foil blankets given to them by the Italians. Many of them had burns and went straight into the clinic to be treated. One had to be carried, as a third of her body was burnt. Then a woman came on board, weeping. “She was my sister,” she sobbed. “I couldn’t save her.” This was Jennifer Arebeyu and her eight-year-old daughter. “She just wanted to have a life,” she said.

Many of the women stared at the deck and I wondered what had happened to them. Over the past two months there has been a large increase in women making the crossing, particularly Nigerians.

“Many of the women we see have been sexually abused,” said Criado-Perez, the MSF nurse. “Some have been trafficked for sex, others have been abused by the militias in Libya.” One said she had been sold to traffickers by her aunt, who had threatened her with branding. Next to her sat two beautiful sisters, Precious, 21, and Peace, 18, from Ado Ekiti state, Nigeria, who told me they had been taken to Libya by a man.

“There was nothing in Nigeria and people said it was better in Libya, so they took us there and promised us a good life,” Precious explained. But when they got there they had been locked up in a room by men and only allowed out to do the cleaning.

Had the men done anything bad to them? “I heard people were raped,” said Precious. Peace interrupted: “They wanted to rape us, so we ran away.”

Did they hurt you? She shrugged and looked down. I tried to find out what had happened to Omo. A 17-year-old girl called Gift from Benin explained that when they boarded, all the women were crushed in the middle near the diesel cans. “It was scary,” she said. “Water kept coming in the boat from the waves.”

To try to reduce the load, some of the migrants decided to unload fuel into the sea. But as they passed it, amid the buffeting of the waves, it spilt over many of the women, burning them as it mixed with the seawater. “People started screaming,” she said. The fumes of the fuel in their squashed space made it hard to breathe. Omo was right at the bottom and she passed out. “She was afraid of the boat and she just gave up,” said Gift. “We tried to revive her, but water came into the boat and she was making a fish mouth and losing her breath, then she went still.”

For the next few hours they sat alongside her dead body, praying they, too, would not perish. Among those on board was Dicken Roland, 35, a former timekeeper in a construction company in southern Nigeria, who had left his home three weeks ago after losing his job and had borrowed $8,000 to pay a trafficker to get him to Libya and Europe. “I left behind three children of six, three and four months because I was desperate,” he said. “But it’s a desperate journey. I wouldn’t have come if I had realised. I would do seminars telling people not to come.”

The next morning, we dropped the migrants in Lampedusa. They were taken in buses to a registration centre, from where they would be transferred to Sicily by ferry a few days later, and then to centres in Italy, where it can be months before they are processed. The Phoenix, meanwhile, headed straight back towards Libya. The sea was suddenly flat and the weather forecast predicted one fine day and storms thereafter. “It’s going to be a monster day,” said Cauchi.

He was right. On that single day, Saturday, September 19, there were reports of 21 rescues — more than 4,000 people. If each paid the £500 average for a journey, the smugglers had netted £2m in a day.

“They have no idea what awaits them”: Regina Catrambone (in the blue cap) tends to a migrant with the aid of Criado-Perez

“It’s big business,” said John Hamilton.

David Cameron seems to think the migrant problem can be solved by destroying the traffickers’ boats. Yet his own military advisers admit that is unworkable. “He just wanted an ‘announceable’,” said one. Giusi Nicolini, 54, who, as mayor of Lampedusa, is right on the front line of the migrant crisis, goes further. “Mr Cameron’s idea is silly,” she says. “It’s just a propaganda operation.”

She pointed out that the traffickers already know their boats are lost, that’s why they are using cheap dinghies. “The majority, now, are rubber boats, so maybe Cameron should throw arrows,” she joked. “The mode of business is: the migrants have already paid, so traffickers don’t care if they reach the destination or not,” she added.

So many migrants have now been buried on Lampedusa, there is no more room. Corpses have to be transferred to Sicily. But Nicolini is determined to give them the dignity of a ceremony. While I was there, she held one for Omo Festus, the body now in a coffin. She held her arm around Jennifer, who wailed, “Why, why?” as the priest blessed the coffin.

“I’m alone now,” Jennifer sobbed into the mayor’s arms.

“At least this time we have a name,” said Nicolini. Amid the ornate Catholic marble tombs, decorated with columns, flowers and photographs, there are simple plaques to shipwrecks. “How many mothers in Ghana, Eritrea, Gambia, Nigeria have had no more news of their sons or daughters?” Nicolini asked. “Having no news is the only way for them to realise their children have died. The EU won the Nobel peace prize just three years ago. Is that really who we are?”

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