From: Ocean Viking
To: ITMRCC
CC: Gabinetto Esteri, Gabinetto MinInterno, Segreteria Capo di Gabinetto, Guardia Costiera, NCC, French Embassy in Italy, CROSS, Norwegian Flag State
For complete information on the four SAR cases in which the Ocean Viking was involved, I kindly refer you and the other recipients of your message to the four Maritime Incident Reports sent earlier, which I attach again here and I would underline the following:
1. The initial SAR case in which the Ocean Viking was involved took place in the overlapping Italian & Maltese SRR after being spotted in the Maltese SRR. When the boat in distress entered into IT SRR, ITMRCC was addressed directly. Multiple calls were made to ITMRCC during the last 5 days and all calls have been logged.
2. Both RCC Malta and ITMRCC were contacted/informed at every stage of the three other operations as per our strict procedures. Again all emails are available and all calls logged.
3. Our flag state has been kept informed with each Maritime Incident Report.
Your assistance is greatly appreciated in finding any suitable Port of Safety where survivors can be promptly disembarked as per SAR conventions, including, if you consider it appropriate, with the support from other authorities and further RCCs.
The 180 survivors we have onboard now have been going through an extensive time at sea, they are exhausted and urgently need to be taken care of by appropriate authorities. The current situation leads to growing tensions onboard which are becoming challenging to manage. We are also monitoring weather conditions over the next couple of days and we can see the situation deteriorating over the Western Med and the Central Med in the coming days.
