Officials Seek 'Ghost Ship' Victim Identities, By Robert Edison Sandiford, Reuters
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (June 1) - Barbados has called in international police force Interpol to help identify the mummified bodies of 11 West Africans found on a yacht that may have been drifting for months.
Police and forensic experts inspect a boat in Bridgetown, Barbados, on May 1. Eleven bodies were found in the cramped cabin of the 20-foot vessel, which had been adrift about 80 miles off Barbados.
A fisherman reported the vessel adrift off the Caribbean island's Ragged Point on April 29, and the Royal Barbados Police Force and Barbados' Coast Guard found the dried-out human remains aboard.
A preliminary post-mortem indicated the young men, who are thought to have been part of a group of about 50 immigrants who lost their way while heading for Spain's Canary islands from the Cape Verde islands, died of starvation and dehydration.
Barbados Attorney-General Dale Marshall said an assessment team from Interpol had arrived and was examining the remains.
DNA samples had been stored for the purpose of identifying the bodies so they could be returned to their families and a second team of Interpol officials was expected to arrive within a week.
Since news of the discovery spread, Senegalese in Europe and elsewhere have been in contact with Barbadian authorities to determine if any of their relatives are among the dead.
Ibrahima Dieme's 29-year-old brother, Diao Souncar Dieme, may have been one of the ill-fated passengers who media reports say paid a mysterious Spaniard 1,300 euros, or $1,665, to board his boat on what he thought would be a voyage to a better life.
"Our family would like to have the body for burial, but we don't know," Dieme told the Nation newspaper.
The Nation reported a note had been found from one of the men, possibly written in his final moments.
It read, in Senegalese: "I would like to send to my family in Bassada a sum of money. Please excuse me and goodbye. This is the end of my life in this big Moroccan sea."
Media reports say there are other notes, some signed, some not. Barbados police declined to comment.
Abdou Karime Cisse, who lives in Portugal but is originally from Senegal, said his first cousin Bouba Cisse, from Gambia, had spoken to him about the proposed trip by telephone.
"I told him I could not send it (the money) for him at the time," he told the Nation. He had not heard from his brother since their last conversation and feared the worst.
Local mariners believe the 20-foot yacht, which had no name and sailed under no flag, drifted away from the West African coastline and got caught up in a circular pattern of currents that run between Africa, the Caribbean and Europe.
Senegalese officials are watching developments.
"We would like to have more information because we are interested to find out if the bodies belong to our country," Senegal's acting consul-general in New York, Moukhtar Kouyate, told the Nation.
