A deadly trade

As families mourned the hundreds of people lost in last week’s Mediterranean shipwreck disaster, grief turned to anger over the Greek authorities’ handling of the incident and Europe’s failure to tackle one of its greatest challenges

- Helena Smith

A little after 8 am last Friday, Fadi, a Palestinian, freshly arrived from Amsterdam, joined the throng of aid workers, activists and journalists gathered around a warehouse in Kalamata’s port.

The 29-year-old was on a mission. “I thought I had spotted my little brother Mohammed among pictures of the [shipwreck’s] survivors,” said the Syrian-born chef, who has lived in the Dutch city for the past decade. “I knew he had gone to Libya to board the boat, so, praying to Allah he was still alive, I decided to get on a flight.”

Within hours of arriving in this port town, Fadi’s wish would come true in an electrifying moment caught on camera. “He had a photograph of his brother and wanted to talk,” said Themis Kanellopoulos, a Greek MEGA TV reporter who was interviewing him at the time. “As the camera was rolling, as he was relating the terrible circumstances that had brought him here, he saw Mohammed through the metal fence near the warehouse where the survivors were being kept. The euphoria of witnessing the two of them come together, right at that moment, was just incredible.”

The reunion of the two brothers was among many heartbreaking scenes that have played out in Kalamata since a fishing trawler, bound for Italy with perhaps as many as 800 people on board, capsized off the southern Peloponnese, a disaster of such magnitude that its effects are being felt well beyond the confines of Greece.