By José María Rodríguez
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, May 30 (EFE).- Over a year has ed since Brazilian authorities discovered a 50-feet-long migrant raft from Mauritania with nine heavily decomposing bodies. The boat had drifted for 81 days across the Atlantic after its failed attempt to reach Spain’s Canary Island, leaving 55 people missing and revealing the growing human toll of transatlantic migration.
27 mobile phones and two ID cards on board are all that was found to decipher who they were. The final mobile network connections retrieved from the victims’ phones helped Brazilian police deduce that the boat left Mauritania on Jan. 23, 2024.
They also know one of 55 men aboard tried to call for help at least 15 times from his mobile phone, despite having no signal. It became clear that everyone on the boat was going to die if they didn’t receive assistance.
The IDs from Mauritania and Mali belonged to Souleimane Sada Gassama and Souloumou Diawara. However, Brazilian authorities have not been able to confirm whether either of the bodies correspond to those names. There is no conclusive evidence linking the IDs to the remains; to this day the nine bodies remain unidentified.
Attempts by Brazil’s Federal Police to compare fingerprints with police records in Mauritania and Mali yielded little. The nine men were buried unnamed in a cemetery in Belém after 12 days, though DNA profiles were preserved in case a family member requested genetic testing.
Pulling these loose threads, EFE has cross-referenced information from Brazil’s Federal Police with details collected by the Red Cross and the Spanish NGO Caminando Fronteras, who worked with families of migrants who went missing at the start of 2024 to reveal which of the lost boats eventually washed up on Brazil’s Amazon coast over 2,000 miles away.
A familiar tragedy
Since Spain’s 2006 “raft crisis”, the first major wave of migration toward the Canary Islands with 31,678 arrivals, more than a dozen boats from Mauritania, Senegal, or Gambia have reached the American continent with everyone aboard those vessels dead at sea.
The first documented case was in Barbados on April 26, 2006 and the last one just this week in the Grenadines. In the first quarter of 2024, about 20 rafts from Mauritania were lost in the Atlantic while heading to the Canary Islands, carrying roughly 1,000 people.
In Latin America, such boats are often mistaken for local migration attempts. It’s necessary to suspend disbelief to imagine a handmade boat crossing 1,864 to 2,485 miles over several months without capsizing in the Atlantic’s fierce currents.
Brazil’s Federal Police and the Civil Police in Belém knew better. They ed the 2021 case in Tobago, where a similar Mauritanian canoe arrived with about 15 bodies on board of African origin.
This time, the authorities had additional evidence: records showed Diawara had crossed the Mali-Mauritania border on Jan.17. He must have boarded the boat shortly after.
In January 2024, 110 rafts arrived in the Canary Islands, almost three a day. It was one of the busiest months on the Atlantic Route since records began, with 7,270 migrants, and one of the deadliest.
The NGOs Caminando Fronteras and Alarm Phone did not stop sending warnings and rescue requests to Spain and Morocco, the two countries entrusted with the security of this maritime area.
Who were those migrants?
According to the findings of Brazilian police the boat found in Para on April 13, 2024, left Mauritania on Jan. 23. That same day Sidi Daouda Sokhona, Hademou Boubou Sokhona, Demba Salou Sokhona, Diadie Demba Sokhona and Mohamed Boubou Camara left Nouadhibou for El Hierro.
All were from the village of Tachott, like Ali Sokhona, a Mauritanian migrant who has lived in Valencia for years and reported their disappearance to the Spanish Red Cross on behalf of their families. Diadie is his first cousin; the rest are relatives or friends.
Among the 27 cell phones examined by the Brazilian police one stands out because it was still logged into a Gmail under the name and photo of Hademou Boubou Sokhona.
The phone’s list also included a number for another person who had ed the Red Cross in search of another young man from Tachott: Hayane Sokhona. And the relative searching for Hayane knows he was traveling with his cousin Hademou.
According to Caminando Fronteras’ database, compiled from their families, these young men left in a raft carrying 55 men, all from Mauritania or Mali. Among them was at least one child, and possibly several teenagers.
Of the 10 phones police were able to restore, most contained Mauritanian s (+222). Authorities also recovered five handwritten notes from the canoe, listing more phone numbers, still no new identities confirmed, but useful leads for Brazilian investigators.
What happened to them?
Surviving nearly three months adrift without food or water at the mercy of the weather and the Atlantic Ocean current is impossible. No one lived to recount what happened. But the phones contain clues to the tragedy’s key moments.
The first call from the sea was made on Jan. 26, day four of the journey. The caller dialed 112, Spain’s emergency number, only once. Brazilian police believe the engine failed that day, though another explanation is possible.
The route from Nouadhibou to El Hierro spans about 466 miles. For two years, 90% of migrant boats have aimed for El Hierro, as it allows them to quickly escape Africa’s coast and avoid patrol boats. But beyond El Hierro lies the open ocean, if anything goes wrong, it’s a death sentence.
Out of reach
An experienced Maritime Rescue captain stationed in the Canary Islands explained that a Mauritanian raft carrying around 50 people typically sails at four to six knots (4–6 mph) if the motor works. In three days, they could cover 435 miles.
When these boats near Spanish waters, engers usually call for rescue as soon as they can. But conventional phone coverage didn’t reach their location, and they didn’t call again that day, at least not from any of the 10 analyzed phones.
But someone did start calling desperately on Jan. 28, two days after the first call. They dialed 112 fifteen times over three days. A testimony of sheer panic. A clear sign they were adrift.
After Jan. 31, no more calls were made. A phone turned on again on Feb. 10, only to record two short videos. In them, six men sit huddled together. Seven, counting the person filming. No one spoke, they had been at sea for 18 days.
No rescue team was looking for them. Their families didn’t raise the alarm until Feb. 4, deceived by the smuggler, who fed them false reports of other landings on El Hierro.
In the raft, time draws a slow line between life and death, dehydration starts killing after four or five days without water.
Those who are weak are the first to go, followed by those who vomit the most. Next, the ones who desperately drank seawater; after, those who jumped overboard in delirium or who suffocated at the bottom of the boat, too weak to rise. In the end, none survived.
Their families are left waiting for phone calls that will never come, misled by traffickers for months with false hopes that their loved ones are alive in Spanish or Moroccan jails. They live in painful uncertainty, as most of these boats are never found. And when they are, only a handful of bodies remain, those who died last. Like the nine now buried in Belém. EFE
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This report was compiled using data from Brazil’s Federal Police, the Red Cross, Caminando Fronteras, and the Sokhona family.
If you believe a loved one may have been aboard this canoe, the Red Cross missing persons service at: [email protected]; the Technical-Scientific Directorate of Brazil’s Federal Police at [email protected]; or Caminando Fronteras at +212694869982.
