MEDITERRANEAN: More deaths of people on the move ― New ‘Justice Fleet’ severs ties with Libyan Coast Guard ― Greek Coast Guard chief faces charges over Pylos disaster ― New detention order for NGO rescue vessel

• At least 45 people have died in two tragic incidents within the space of a week.
• A new alliance of search and rescue (SAR) NGOs has announced that it is cutting communication with the Libyan Coast Guard.
• The head of the Greek Coast Guard and three other senior officers are set to face trial over in a deadly shipwreck that took place in 2023.
• Another NGO SAR ship has been detained in Italy.

At least 45 people have died in two tragic incidents within the space of a week. According to the International Organization for Migration, a boat carrying 49 people (47 men and two women) capsized off the coast of Libya on 3 November. Five days later, Libyan authorities rescued seven men who had been adrift since the capsizing but the other 42 people who were on the boat are missing and presumed dead. On 11 November, three bodies were recovered from the sea 15 nautical miles south of the island of Gavdos by the Greek Coast Guard and the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) who also rescued 56 people. Survivors reported that there had been more people on the boat when it capsized and the search for more survivors was reportedly ongoing the following day.

A new alliance of search and rescue (SAR) NGOs has announced that it is cutting communication with the Libyan Coast Guard. On 5 November, the 13 members of the recently-formed ‘Justice Fleet’ stated that they had decided to “end operational communication with the Joint Rescue Coordination Center in Tripoli” and that they considered the Libyan Coast Guard as “an illegitimate actor at sea”. Commenting on the decision, Ina Friebe from alliance member CompassCollective said: “We have never recognised these actors as a legitimate rescue authority – they are part of a violent regime enabled by the European Union”. “Now we are increasingly being pressured to communicate with exactly these actors. This must stop. Ending all operational communication with the so-called Libyan Rescue Coordination Center is both a legal and moral necessity – a clear line against European complicity in crimes against humanity,” she added. Friebe’s words were echoed by Giulia Messmer from Sea-Watch who said: “It is not only our right but our duty to treat armed militias as such in our operational communication – not as legitimate actors in search and rescue operations. Those who save lives act in accordance with international law. Those who organise or finance violence, violate it”.

The head of the Greek Coast Guard and three other senior officers are set to face trial over a deadly shipwreck that took place in 2023. On 6 November, several media organisations reported that the Prosecutor of the Reviewing Court in Piraeus had recommended that Vice Admiral Tryfon Kontizas and three of his senior colleagues should be charged with a number of offences, including manslaughter by negligence in international waters, in relation to the sinking of the Adriana fishing boat off the coast of Pylos in June 2023 and the subsequent loss of more than 600 lives. In May 2025, the Public Prosecutor of the Piraeus Maritime Court decided that 17 members of the Greek Coast Guard, including its then-head Vice Admiral Giorgios Alexandrakis, should face charges over the incident. However, the court cleared Tryfon Kontizas, who had just been appointed as head a few weeks before the court’s decision, and the three other senior officers. Lawyers for survivors and relatives of the victims of the Pylos disaster challenged the decision not to prosecute the four officers. Commenting on the recent decision to bring criminal proceedings against them, a group of refugee rights NGOs, including ECRE member organisations the Greek Council for Refugees and Refugee Support Aegean, wrote that it was a “substantial and self-evident development in the process of vindicating the victims and delivering justice”.

Another NGO SAR ship has been detained in Italy. On 4 November, the Mediterranea, which is operated by the NGO Mediterranea Saving Humans (MSH), disembarked the 92 people that its crew had rescued in three different operations in the previous two days in the port of Porto Empedocle. However, by landing on the island of Sicily, the ship’s captain had defied an order from the Italian authorities to sail to the port of Livorno in central Italy, 63 nautical miles (almost 1,200 kilometres) and a four day journey away from the rescue area. According to MSH, this decision resulted in the captain and the Mediterranea’s shipowner being issued with an official report “accusing them of allegedly violating the so-called Piantedosi Decree” and the ship being placed in administrative detention for an unspecified period. MSH has criticised the decision on the grounds that both the ship’s doctor and the medical authority appointed by the maritime authorities had certified that none of the rescued passengers were fit to undertake the additional three days of navigation that would have been required for the Mediterranea to reach Livorno, and that it was the public prosecutor’s office of the Juvenile Court of Palermo that had “formally requested the Ministries of the Interior and Transport to authorize the disembarkation of minors in Porto Empedocle”. In a statement published on its website, MSH wrote: “It is increasingly evident that the right to life and health of those rescued at sea is not a priority for the Italian government – nor is respect for international and national law, or for the decisions of the judiciary”. “What drives the imposition of these unjust and unlawful measures is an inhumane obsession: to obstruct civilian sea rescue operations,” it added.

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