At her house within the Syrian city of Daraa al-Balad, Rania Abu Aoun spends her days ready anxiously for information about her son, Ramy.
It’s agonising, she says.
Ramy’s telephone has been off since January 3, 2022, when he left on a ship from Algeria heading in the direction of Spain. He disappeared on that journey.
That day, the 30-year-old departed Algeria from the northwestern metropolis of Oran, hoping to achieve Europe and supply a greater future for his three youngsters, six-year-old Bayan, five-year-old Layan and two-year-old Hamza, who was born simply three days after Ramy reached Turkey, the primary cease on his lengthy and arduous journey.
Because the Syrian warfare erupted in 2011, the city of Daraa, and particularly the neighbourhood of Tarik al-Unhappy the place the Aoun household lives, has been caught up in intense combating between opposition fighters and authorities forces, coming below heavy bombardment. Rania’s home was hit by an air raid in 2013.
The relentless warfare and the financial challenges Syrians expertise as refugees in neighbouring international locations – notably Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey – pushed 1000’s to go for the troublesome journey to Europe.
By March 2021, multiple million Syrians had arrived in Europe as asylum seekers and refugees. Nevertheless, some, like Ramy and the three pals he was travelling with, appear to have by no means made it.
A contented life for his youngsters
“Ramy is quiet, loves people and enjoys studying,” Rania tells Al Jazeera on the telephone. Sobbing, she despatched by photos of her son when he was a toddler.
“From a young age, he focused on school and in the summer, he worked with his grandfather in the olive fields. His dream was to study commerce and economics.”
In 2008, earlier than the warfare in Syria started, Ramy moved to Lebanon to seek out work and finally pursue greater schooling.
When he returned to Syria for a go to in 2011, it was the final time he set foot in his house nation. That yr, the revolution broke out.
When assaults on his house city intensified in 2013 and the household house was hit, Ramy’s mom, spouse and youngsters moved to Lebanon to reside with him. However financially, issues had been dire. He was not incomes sufficient, thanks partially to Lebanon’s ongoing financial disaster, which worsened in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. His job at a restaurant was bringing in $50 a month, which couldn’t help his household.
“He had been thinking about migrating [to Europe] for some time. His objective was to bring a happy life to his children,” Rania stated.
“Then, he met Latifa.” That was Might 2021.
Based on a confidential report from the Spanish Nationwide Police’s Investigative Brigades on Prison Networks (which Al Jazeera has additionally learn), “Latifa” has been recognized because the chief of a “complex international criminal organisation” that primarily smuggles folks from Syria into Europe.
The doc states that she is believed to have dealt with the transportation of at the very least 500 Syrians into Libya and that her community consists of collaborators from many various international locations, together with Spain.
Rania defined that it was “Latifa” who organized Ramy’s journey to Spain. He by no means noticed her in particular person however paid her $4,000 by intermediaries. “I had to sell an apartment that my sisters and I had inherited from our father to be able to pay for Ramy’s journey,” Rania stated.
The girl stated she would prepare for his journey from Lebanon to Libya through Turkey, then Egypt by air after which by automotive to Algeria, the place somebody would coordinate the journey by boat to Almería, Spain. Ramy’s household paid, considering the cash delivered to Latifa would cowl the whole lot.
Nevertheless, after he arrived in Algeria in June 2021, Latifa stopped responding, Ramy instructed his household.
On his method to Algeria, Ramy met different Syrians who had been despatched on the identical route by the identical smuggler. Anouar Ali Al-Darwish is the spouse of one in every of them: Anas. She stated the boys spent seven months in Oran managing the departure, every having to pay $2,000 extra to different smugglers.
Ramy made his final name to his household on January 3, 2022, from Oran. He spoke to his daughters and instructed them: “Be careful and don’t make mummy cross.” He later wrote to his spouse: “I’m going to work. Take care of the children, I will run out of credit”.
Ramy’s flatmates and Caminando Fronteras, an NGO monitoring human rights violations at Euro-African borders, consider that on the night of Tuesday, January 3, Ramy set sail in a dinghy with Anas, his different Syrian companions, and a gaggle of Moroccans and Algerians. Since that night time, there was no signal of them.
Households search alone
Final January, after not listening to something about her son for a number of days, Rania started to panic and determined to take motion. “I reached out to Latifa and instructed her that my son had disappeared. I requested her to have mercy on me… to answer.
“But she never did.”
Rania and the households of the three different Syrians Ramy was travelling with determined to take up the search themselves however no person they’ve contacted since has been capable of assist. Some simply made the method more durable.
A person calling himself Abu Al-Dhahab Al-Raqqawi, one other middleman who could have been concerned in arranging Ramy’s departure from Algeria, denied that the dinghy sank and refused to take any accountability for the doable plight of the boys, in line with a textual content dialog with Rania, which she confirmed to Al Jazeera.
Anas’s spouse, Anouar, was in Jordan on the time her husband departed for Spain. She and Anas had fled to Balqa, Jordan, in 2011 after he was injured by an artillery shell in Syria.
“After Anas left, I struggled so much to be able to pay the rent and take responsibility for the children’s expenses, they’re seven and nine years old,” Anouar stated.In desperation, Anouar reached out to the Spanish Crimson Cross and was capable of make a grievance to the Spanish Ombudsman on April 24, 2022. After weeks of investigation, the Ombudsman’s remaining report acknowledged that, after consulting the Nationwide Police, no details about her husband may very well be present in its databases. As a result of one of many first steps to claiming asylum in Europe is registration with the police, this recommended Anas and his companions by no means set foot in Spain.
Rania and Anouar had nearly given up hope when, in November 2022, Rania acquired an nameless tip-off through Fb suggesting that Ramy and his companions had been being held in a jail within the Spanish province of Almería after being “sentenced to two years for having drugs”.
When Al Jazeera contacted Spain’s Common Secretariat of Penitentiary Establishments to confirm this data, it replied that the folks named weren’t registered in any jail.
Tens of 1000’s extra lacking or useless
The 2 girls, who are actually in contact with a whole bunch of different households whose family members have additionally gone lacking on sea voyages throughout the Mediterranean to Spain, say they’re uninterested in looking alone, with no help from the authorities.
“The [Spanish] government says that everything has to go through the Red Cross but NGOs can’t be in charge of supporting the families and searching for the missing – that the police’s responsibility,” defined Helena Maleno, founding father of Caminando Fronteras (Strolling Borders).
“In the same way that care centres for migrants are being outsourced, so that they do not go through the normal public social services, the government is outsourcing death care,” stated Maleno, who has been holding monitor of deaths and disappearances within the Mediterranean, in addition to serving to the households of the lacking, for the previous twenty years.
She and her group report that in 2022 alone, at the very least 500 folks went lacking or died whereas taking the Algerian route in the direction of Spain – the deadliest sea route after the Atlantic one to the Canary Islands.
Since 2014, the variety of these reported lacking or useless within the Mediterranean is 28,229, in line with the Worldwide Group for Migration (IOM). It has additionally acknowledged that 2023 has, to this point, been the deadliest year for Mediterranean sea crossings since 2017.
“Until recently, not even the National Centre for the Disappeared [in Spain] registered the disappearances at the border and sometimes, the police threatened the families, saying that they were the smugglers,” Maleno defined.
Caminando Fronteras has helped many households file police stories about their lacking family. They are saying that little by little, there are extra investigations and DNA testing for individuals who disappeared within the Mediterranean. Nevertheless, for Rania, that is too little, too late.
Virtually two years after her son’s disappearance, Rania returned to Syria with Ramy’s spouse and youngsters to their home which, though broken by the warfare, at the very least retains Ramy’s reminiscence alive for them.
Her voice full of desperation, Rania requested: “Will I do know the destiny of my son after this story?
“For God’s sake, I don’t ask for anything, only to know if he is alive or dead.”
