Family of Iraqi Kurd missing from deadliest Channel crossing demand answers

An independent inquiry into what happened when at least 27 migrants died after a small boat capsized in the English Channel has heard emotional testimony from the father of one of those missing.

Mustafa Mina Nabi told the Cranston Inquiry in London that he would not rest until he found out what happened to his son, and not knowing was “awful”.

Zanyar Mustafa Mina, who was 20 when he left Iraqi Kurdistan, was classed as missing after the incident on November 24, 2021. His last message to his family the day before said: “I’m leaving now.”

The inquiry had heard that 26 people were identified among the dead, with four people missing. The body of another person had been found, but their identity has not been confirmed. It is not certain how many people were on board the boat that night, but French authorities believe there were 33 people, including 13 women and eight children.

Zanyar was described to the inquiry, led by Sir Ross Cranston, as energetic, smart and someone who “always wanted to help people”.

Mr Mina Nabi, in an audio account, said: “No one has found his body, which makes it even worse. I am very upset, but no one has told us what they are doing to locate those still missing. In three years, we have been given no information.

“I want to come to France and England to look for my son. Sometimes I still believe he could be in a hospital or prison somewhere. Not knowing is the worst part, and my family and I hope that the inquiry will investigate properly what happened to those still missing.

“We will not rest until we know what happened to Zanyar.”

Investigations by The National have exposed how criminal gangs based in Iraqi Kurdistan are carrying out their people smuggling operations in plain sight. They transport thousands of people from the region to Europe, where they congregate in northern France in the hope of crossing to the UK. At least 78 people died last year making the perilous journey across the English Channel in deathtrap inflatable boats.

The gangs are centred around the money exchanges in towns such as Ranya, and hawala is an essential part of their operations in northern France and Iraqi Kurdistan. The system allows money to be received from migrants and transferred among the smugglers, away from the eyes of law enforcement.

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Family trauma

The inquiry is set to hear 27 accounts from families in the last two days of hearings. The father of Afrasia Ahmed Mohamed said when his body was returned to the family in Iraq he cried so much it affected his vision.

“My family had to help me find the bathroom because I could not see,” Ahmed Mohammed Ahmed said.

He described life as “very difficult” in Iraq and said his son left in October 2021, before the family were contacted to send DNA samples to France, which confirmed he was dead.

“We have suffered a terrible loss, and we’ve suffered more in the three years since the incident, when it felt like the UK and French authorities were not taking action,” he said.

Abdullahi Mohamud Hassan, the brother of Halima Mohammed Shikh, from Somalia, also told the inquiry the mother-of-three left the country in 2019 because of political instability and violence.

He said he received a picture of her face in the morgue on around December 14, 2021, adding: “I find it so painful thinking about what happened to her.”

“Halima’s children [in Somalia] continue to suffer the loss of their mother, but we are doing everything we can as a family to support them and give them the love they need,” he said.

Her cousin, Ali Areef, who is a Norwegian national, told the inquiry that he met her in Paris weeks before the tragedy and she seemed “very low and worried all the time”.

He described contacting Somalian survivor Issa Mohamed Omar, who told him he was with Halima until she died, and heard her shouting her last words after the boat capsized: “Help me, I don’t want to die.”

In an account to the inquiry, he said: “I will never take a ferry across the Channel again or go to Paris.

“This tragic incident is never far away from my mind, and it makes me feel sick to think about crossing the Channel in a ferry where others, including a member of my family, lost their lives because there was no other way to cross.”

The father of Mohammed Hussein Mohammedie said he received his son’s body back in Iraqi Kurdistan on his 20th birthday.

Hussein Mohammedie said: “Mohammed was often complaining that I had not been brave enough to leave Iraq. He wanted to be different. He wanted to be brave.”

The last time they spoke was on the evening of November 23, 2021, before he got on the boat, and the whole family gathered around the phone to hear from him.

Mohammed's death was confirmed after his father sent a photo to a Kurdish journalist who saw the bodies after the news of the incident broke.

He also spoke to a Kurdish survivor who described people in the water taking off their life jackets because of the cold and pain, and said: “They wanted to sink and die.”

“But not my son. He wanted to live,” Mohammed's father said.

“I was told by the survivor that my son was the last one alive before they rescued the survivor. He told me that if they had rescued them half an hour sooner that my son would be alive. It has affected us in a way that we will never forget.

“If what the survivor told me is right, had the coastguard arrived 30 minutes earlier, my son would have lived, this I cannot bear and can never forgive.”

The evidence continues.

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