The Forgotten Shipwreck Newsnight

On one April night this year, hundreds of migrants drowned

in the Mediterranean as a trawler overloaded with human

The story of what happened that night has not been told, until now.

As far as we can tell, there has been no official investigation into

the sinking of the ship this spring in the eastern Mediterranean.

There are survivors living in refugee centres

And that evidence points to not just mass

killing, but something darker than that.

Also tonight, we are learning more about the Prime

People talk about the sort of Brexit that there is going to be.

Actually, we want a red, white and blue Brexit.

We really are learning more about it.

And we have a former Brexit Secretary to offer his opinions.

Kellyanne, I just retweeted the best tweet.

I mean, wow, what a great, smart tweet.

What does the Twitter corporation think about Trump?

He's been able to share that kind of authentic nature on Twitter

in a way that a lot of politicians maybe haven't done so in the past,

News has often reached us over the last couple of years,

of migrants drowning in large numbers in the Mediterranean.

Their overloaded boats toppling over at the slightest disturbance.

Who could forget the picture of Aylan Kurdi that brought

The emotions that most of us have felt at these heart-rending

tragedies probably include sadness, distress, motivation to help,

Tonight, we have a story to make you angry.

The tale of what we believe to be the biggest migrant shipwreck

of 2016 and the criminal behaviour that caused needless deaths.

Over 500 people are believed to have died on one night in April,

which is about twice the entire number of people who've been killed

in passenger airline crashes anywhere in the world this year.

But those deaths in the Mediterranean cannot really

be called an accident, and there has been no investigation

Except one, John Sweeney, with our producer James Clayton

and in conjunction with Reuters, decided to look at the

In the 21st-century, the Mediterranean Sea is fast becoming a

mass grave. This year so far, 4700 people have drowned on the open sea.

Very few sinkings have been properly investigated. Until now. What we

believe is the worst sinking of 2016 Took Place at night at sea. There is

no footage. We have hurt to build a picture from the survivors scattered

across Europe. It is a story of grief. Frustration. You think the

authorities have done enough to investigate this tragedy? No.

Accusations of murder. Do you think this is murder? Yes, this is murder.

An international inaction. And there has been no investigation worthy of

the game, are you comfortable with that? Not really, no. This is the

story of the forgotten shipwreck. On April the 16th this year, a small

fishing boat was picked up off the Greek coast. On 37 survivors. Every

night I'm not sleeping because I remember the boat accident. They

said they had come from Libya, and so did the UNHCR. Perhaps as many as

500 people drowned, a few days ago, we do not know exactly when. When a

large ship went down between Libya and Italy. But when Stephen Gray

from Reuters talked to survivors he started to question the official

version. There was their language, the way they were holding back about

details, the way they were vague about certain things. They had all

apparently lost their phones and could not remember who for example

they paid money to to get on this voyage. The dates they would giving

did not add up. The details of how they apparently simply drifted from

the scene of this disaster off the coast of Libya to a rescue point

halfway between Greece and Italy, that did not seem to me to add up.

Together with Reuters, Newsnight set out to find out what really

happened. This man is one of the survivors. He had hoped to build a

new life in Europe with his wife and baby girl. His wife and daughter and

himself and 200 other migrants were loaded off a small fishing feeder

boat onto a deep sea trawler, which would take them across the

Mediterranean to Italy but the trawler was already crammed with 300

people. These two were on the top deck of

the trawler when it capsized. They made it to France.

Overloaded boats can sync all too easily. At least this boat capsized

in daylight when migrants crowded to one side after spotting an Italian

naval ship. The trawler in our story sank at night. The physics of the

simpering is simple. 500 people weighing roughly ten tonnes. If ten

tonnes of cargo ship suddenly, a boat can capsize.

He was the last person that this man was able to say. How many were in

the water when the feeder boat left? Muaz is housed in a refugee centre.

He is one of the lucky ones. Out of almost 100 in the water, almost all

were abandoned. As far as we can tell there has been no official

investigation into the sinking of this ship in the eastern

Mediterranean. But the evidence is available. There are survivors

living in refugee centres like this one behind me and the evidence

points to not just mass killing, but something darker than that. Murder.

There is the crucial fact that everybody has overlooked, an error

that has prevented relatives of the dead getting any justice. The

survivors told everyone they came from Libya, but that was alive, the

boat left not from Libya, but here, in Egypt. Was the story true?

Libya is in chaos, but Egypt is firmly under the heel of its strong

man president, so there is a big question. What is Egypt doing to

police its people smugglers? Not much, it seems. The migrants bought

their tickets in Cairo from brokers. 500 people on the boat, many at

$2000 each. That could be as much as $1 million gross. Even after

expenses, the smugglers are making a killing. I travelled to a village in

the Nile delta where nine boys on the boat came from. Too many people

in Europe, a migrant boat sinking may seem like another grim

statistic. For this woman, it was far, far worse than that. The list

of the missing from her village starts with her own son.

When you hear about these mass sinkings, you hear about Libya, not

Egypt. But our investigation has shown that as many as 150 Egyptians

may have died in this tragedy. The Egyptian authorities have not

investigated, so you might well ask, why is that? Have the Egyptians

Egyptian authorities got something to hide?

Because there has been no full enquiry, she believes that her son

may still be alive. This is what we understand of the doomed voyage.

Most migrants leave the beach at Alexandria at night in small boats

like these. They are picked up by the smugglers' feeder boat which

sails west to meet the trawler in international waters. It is when the

feeder boat transfers the human cargo to the trawler that disaster

strikes. Whilst at sea, we believe, around 190 Somalis, 150 Ethiopians

and 160 Egyptians and others from Sudan and Eritrea, roughly 500

people in all. This is Miami Beach, Alexandria, where some of the

survivors said their voyage started. Over there, that place with a little

shack, that is a military post. The idea that hundreds of migrants could

leave this place in a police state like Egypt without being seen? Well,

that's a little far-fetched. an in the evidence linking the

disaster to two smugglers comes from this man. He is the father of an

Egyptian victim. He went to the police and they carried out a

curious investigation which concluded there had been no

manslaughter or murder, but only financial fraud. The police have

said this is a fraud case. Is that right?

Do you think the authorities have done enough to investigate this

tragedy? The alleged leaders of the smuggling

gangs are known by their nicknames, the doctor. Abdul filmed one of the

alleged smugglers talking. He claims that the man was sent by the other

man. We wanted to ask this man, Al-Bougy,

about his alleged role in the sinking. But no one was in. We were

told that he was on the run. The alleged smuggler known as the doctor

did not return calls made by our investigation. Back in Cairo, we set

out to track down a Somali broker and we wanted to challenge him about

his role in the loss of so many lives. But the secret police had

other ideas. We tried to interview the Somali broker and we have been

stopped by the secret police. We are not free to leave. We are waiting

for a police car and they will speak to us some more. We are now being

escorted to the police station. Isn't that nice? , glee, the

Egyptian authorities seemed keener on preventing journalism that matter

journalism than people smuggling. As a result, the mass drownings

continue. In September, another overloaded vessel sank off the coast

of Egypt but this time so close to the sure that the authorities were

compelled to act. 200 people drowned. Had the April tragedy been

properly investigated, this second mass loss of life could perhaps have

been avoided. In Egypt, a spokesperson for the Minister of

justice said if the occurrence of such a crime is proven, Egypt

certainly will not hesitate to conduct the necessary investigations

to uncover it and arrest the perpetrators and bring them to

justice. But Egypt is not alone. Greece, the country where the

survivors landed, has not investigated. No official body,

national or multinational, has held anyone to account for the deaths or

even opened an enquiry into the shipwreck. As well as the tragic

loss of life, you're's own security is being undermined. I went to The

Hague to ask the head of the European police agency why it had

failed. We believe 500 people died in this, the biggest mass drowning

of 20 16th and so far there has been no investigation worthy of the name.

You comfortable with that? Not really. I think this is an

humanitarian disaster. The absence of clear answers in this case, to be

fair to the authorities involved, reflect the difficulty in getting to

the heart of the story, conflicting information from the survivors and

elsewhere and there are some significant investigative problems

in identifying who is criminally responsible. It is an uncomfortable

situation. Europol has not done an investigation because no one has

complained to you. You are powerless, due? Know, when it is

referred to us, we can institute a full range of intelligence sharing

facilities that we have at Europol and the way that we have used in

many cases to hunt down and successfully target these people

smuggling organisations. In this case, there has been good work done

in your investigation and I am happy and I would like to receive the file

that you have found and we will look at it again and we will take it to

the Greek authorities and see if there is more that we can do. If

these mass sinkings are not thoroughly investigated, then three

things will continue to happen. The first is that the smugglers will

continue to get richer, the second is that Europe will not be able to

put pressure on the host countries like here in Egypt and the third,

worst of all, is that thousands of people will continue to drown. And

for the people who have lost loved ones, no investigation means grief

without end. We did ask the Egyptian government

for an interview, but they declined. Though the Justice Department

told our investigation that they have just passed new laws

against illegal migration and are determined to take

action against smugglers. You can watch the Our World

documentary on John Sweeney's investigation on the News Channel

this Sunday at 21:30, And John Sweeney and Stephen Grey

from Reuters will be taking your questions

on their investigation. That's tomorrow at 1pm on the BBC

Newsnight Facebook page. It may be coming out

in dribs and drabs, but the government is feeding us

more about the approach We have some fairly

bland-sounding propositions - in today's version the Prime

Minister said we are looking And you thought it was magenta

that we were seeking. But slogans aside, for anyone

listening to the objectives that have been set out in public of late,

a relatively full picture And to add to that,

the government also today conceded that it will publicly set

out its plan, before The flurry of Brexit chatter

was prompted by two things: the fact that Labour have tabled a Commons

motion on it tomorrow, urging And secondly, leading

Brexit negotiations for the European Commission,

said that in effect we'll have 18 months to sort it out,

and that we won't as good deal Our political editor

Nick Watt is with me. On the domestic politics, Labour put

down a motion, the Tories have amended it, who has won this little

spat? It is a score draw all around, that averted a Tory rebellion and

allows all sides to say they are claiming victory. A number of

pro-European Tories were going to vote with Labour because Labour had

used very colourful language to draw up a motion which would require the

government to publish its Brexit plan before it triggers those

Article 50 manoeuvres. The government said we will accept that

Labour motion, but we will tackle on our own little bit that says that

the government should be allowed to trigger Article 50 by its deadline

of the end of March. I have learned this evening that it is highly

likely that Labour is going to accept that motion as amended and

will claim victory on two grounds, in the first place it will say thank

you very much for accepting our demand that you publish your plans

before you trigger Article 50. I think when we see those plans, they

will be very much on the broad principle, of that 31-macro. The

second thing, Labour will say we have no problem in saying that

Article 50 should be triggered by the end of March because we agree

with that. Everyone is converging, except potentially the Europeans.

They have been setting out parameters, what has been the

reaction? There was some surprise in Downing Street when it was said that

if Theresa May follows her timetable then those negotiations will have to

be concluded by October, 2018 and the reason for that is to have it

fully ratified and signed and sealed by the time of the European

Parliamentary elections in the spring of 2019. There was less

surprise when he said that there could be no cherry picking and no

favourable axis to the single market unless you accept the full freedoms.

What the intervention showed was that once Article 50 is triggered in

a legal sense, the UK has very few cards to play. But the British

Government's view is once we have the French and German elections out

of the way by this time next year, we will be looking towards a

political deal where EU leaders will not want to leave the UK out in the

cold. Thank you. Joining me now is Oliver Lachlan, former Cabinet

Office minister who was briefly in charge of Brexit before Theresa May

became Prime Minister. I do not understand, the government have

announced something, we are going to be given the plan before Article 50,

why did they wait for a Labour motion before making the

announcement? There was no doubt that the government would publish

some kind of paper before it started negotiating. I am not sure that it

is going to tell us anything we do not know already and I do think it

should. When they say publish a plan, is that like three tweets or

400 pages of a White Paper? How do I know? I am sure that Whitehall will

create something mellifluous and serious. I very much doubt and I

hope that it won't say anything very material that has not been said

already. We are clear what the outlines are, we are leaving, we are

leaving the single market, we are going to have control over our own

migration. If you want that, it implies you're the single market. We

will be able to negotiate our own free trade deals with the rest of

the word. That is pretty clear. You have a whole pile of very

nitty-gritty bits of negotiating on how you deal with European arrest

warrant and information exchange and you come to the big issue about

trading and the truth is there is no one alive today who knows what kind

of trading relationship we will end up with. You can't possibly declare

a plan. The objective is clear, we want as much trade as possible.

What's amazing is that you have spelt out, out of the customs union

and the single market, free-trade deals with other countries, you have

spelt out so much more clearly than any member of the government, why is

that? Actually I don't think that is true. I have an unusual habit of

reading what is produced. It has been said or implied. I thank you

can infer all that. When Theresa May is asked a perfectly straightforward

question, is a possible we will be making payments to the EU, everyone

knows the answer is yes, David Davis has said that, she says, we want a

Red, White and Blue Brexit. Why can she say yes, we would not like to

make payments, but it could be inevitable? You are much clearer

than she is or David Davis 's or Boris Johnson is, much clearer. On

the question of payments, you don't want to pay an indefinite amount,

but there are some things it would be worth paying some amounts for,

particularly access to the sale of stocks and bonds and things by

financial institutions in Britain. If we were not able to do that, we

might lose a lot of investment in the City. I think it is very wise of

the Prime Minister not to get pinned down on these things because she did

not want to start fighting now and it will be quite a difficult

domestic political issue, in advance of knowing what she does or does not

have to give away. She doesn't want to get into a position of someone

asking how much will we pay? You don't want to pay more than you need

to. I think her whole instinct is to keep her cards close to her chest

and I think she is right to do that and I think it is crazy for everyone

else to demand more. A Red, White and Blue Brexit is simply a stall,

just to be quite clear? It's a way of saying we will get the best deal

that we can. That is what you ask a sensible Prime Minister to get for

this country. If we have a plan and we know what we want, why are we

delaying? Why don't we just invoke Article 50? White Wade four months

until March. As you may know, I teamed up with some other colleagues

to suggest we should not appeal to the Supreme Court. Slightly tricky

thing to do, who knows what they will decide? I thought we could put

a bill to Parliament, I think it is abundantly clear, I have been on

programmes with John McDonnell and he was clear that Labour would vote

for Article 50 and I cannot see any reason why we should not get a bill

very quickly through Parliament and get a move on. There is something

going on, which of course is easy for you and quite difficult inside

Whitehall, there is a huge wealth of detail about a whole series of

things which are not really integral to the issues we're talking about

but have to be sorted out. What do you do about the Information

Systems? How you deal with the kinds of cooperation on security and

intelligence and policing... In a restricted time when I dealt

with this I could see the ghastly prospect of those details.

You would rather they had not gone to the Supreme Court because it

delays everything and there is a risk the Supreme Court will

potentially go further than the High Court in giving Parliament or

devolved assemblies rights. I am worried about uncharted waters. If

you get 11 Supreme Court judges who are very intelligent and serious

people, the attacks on the judiciary from some quarters were despicable

and totally wrong. The judges try to do their job and judge the law. In

this area of the law is indistinct, we do not know what our constitution

is, it is not written, and we ought to have one. Because we do not have

a written constitution, if you ask 11th learn to people what is the

Constitution? You may find out things you do not want to know and I

have no idea what the result will be but I fear there may be limits on

the prerogative in ways that limit future governments from taking

actions that would be sensible and I don't think we need to have that but

we are in the middle of the trial so it will happen. Thanks.

Every three years, the OECD, an international, official body,

publishes the results of its Pisa tests.

they are meant to be internationally comparable tests

Ministers from well-performing countries open their results

envelope, look aghast for a moment, and then leap in the air with joy.

Actually, it doens't work like that but the Pisa league tables often

spark national panics, because half the countries

The results came out today and our policy editor Chris Cook has

The Pisa tests are like in -- inkblot tests with people seeing

different patterns. These are sacked by students and 72 jurisdictions.

What should you see in Pisa? Pisa is trying to test people'sreal-world

problem-solving skills so it is giving questions about being in a

supermarket and you see articles priced in different ways. What it

does not test is the subject specific content knowledge you study

in schools. There are not questions on the periodic table for example.

There are tests that measured knowledge and you get similar

patterns of knowledge for broke so it looks like whatever Pisa is

measuring is something real. This year it is focused on science, a

topic where Britain does well and the UK average beats the OECD

average. We are in a packed with Germany, Netherlands, Australia,

Germany and Korea. We are behind the leaders Canada, Estonia, Finland and

Japan, and in front, Singapore. What can we learn from the countries that

beat us? First some of this is about attitude and culture. Culture is

important. An example is a study by a professor and colleagues looking

at Canadian and Japanese students and how they respond to failure.

Where Japanese students thought they had failed they were motivated to

work harder compared to Canadian students, who I imagine more similar

to British students and are demotivated by failure. Different

ways of thinking about success and how you get there. There are things

we could change more easily. There is very little time to do anything

else than teaching. That has been the price force the -- for small

classes. East Asia, those teachers would teach a larger class but it

leaves the more room to advance their careers to prepare lessons, to

work with other teachers. It is not about the student staff ratio, which

is pretty much fine in England. There are parts of the results that

should concern Britain. While we are better at science, we are only at

the OECD average in reading and maths. We have not really improved

in the last ten years. Finally, when you look at the UK average it hides

important disparities between the performances of the four home

nations. England is on 512 points for science, 19 above the OECD

average. It puts it six months of school time ahead of Northern

Ireland, and Scotland, which is four points up. But England is the best

part of the year ahead of Wales, eight points below the OECD average

in that gap is driven by the fact that middle-class and rich people in

particular in Wales are doing very poorly. The results may matter more

elsewhere in the UK. The Scottish education minister is pondering

English sounding reforms. The report from the Pisa analysis is

uncomfortable reading and we should recognise that. There has been

stability in maths performance but a fall in science and reading in

Scotland. The clearest policy prescription was aimed at England

and its flirtation with new grammar schools. At the School of witchcraft

and wizardry, Harry Potter and classmates were very... As they

arrived they were sorted into houses. An early sorting might be

appropriate for students of magic but does not work in the real world.

As it happens, English schools are probably more selective than you

think because of their unusual love for setting and streaming. You see

an interesting pattern for England. The school system is one of the

least selective across OECD countries but once you move inside

schools, England is one of the most stratified. A lot of selection takes

place within classes within schools and that is more difficult to deal

with. Our governments should at least agree they can see one thing

in the results. Things are not where we would like them to be.

Donald Trump tweeted today, as he does.

He said "Boeing is building a brand new 747 Air Force One

for future presidents, but costs are out of control,

One aerospace analyst said the tweet was "completely nonsensical

But it's very difficult to adjudicate on complicated program

management and military requirements questions with Twitter

I tell you all this, not to talk about Trump,

It's had a tough time of late, fighting for relevance as other

I met up with Rob Owers this afternoon, he is one

of the company's most senior people in the UK.

We sat in the library at the Twitter office,

which conspicuously seemed to have hardly any books.

I suggested to Mr Owers, he must be pleased that Donald Trump

has kept Twitter in the public eye this year.

I think Donald Trump's my use of the platform has been something

that has obviously driven a lot of attention.

We've seen him take to Twitter to share his opinions,

to be very candid, in a way that I suppose he's been able to share

that authentic nature on Twitter in the way that a lot of politicians

maybe haven't done so in the past at such a level.

The kind of things he's been saying in rallies to his supporters around

the country he is now saying via his Twitter feed

A big cohort of our user base, and early adopters were of course

journalists, and journalists are jumping on this every time

he tweets, of course, to say, let's fact check this,

let's look at it, let's see what the context is,

the meaning behind it, that kind of thing.

And also it's sparking debate from our users.

I mean, in what sort of way, for someone who's not on Twitter,

would you say you would have consumed the Brexit referendum?

Every year we look at the top trends that are on Twitter.

Last year, it was very much around movements that had sprung up,

where people were trying to give a voice to the voiceless.

Things like Black Lies Matter, Home To Vote, Refugees Welcome.

2016 was a year of huge, seismic live events,

so the US election, Brexit, as you just talked about.

And what we've seen is where people have come to our platform

They are coming onto Twitter and they are seeing both

A very interesting question and a sort of big issue

for our society is this one of tribes and a very divided country

Howling around their same views with their same chums,

Are there people who are basically being fed the same old diet

We always encourage people on Twitter to follow people

from both sides of an argument, to follow people you agree with

But definitely when it comes to this kind of filter bubble argument

that is often labelled at Twitter, I think that absolutely wrong

on a number of levels, particularly around the fact

Twitter, the hashtag is where Twitter originated

That allows people to tap on something and to see tweets

You are not going to see it filtered by one side or the other.

Also, we don't have an interest here at Twitter in having

any kind of algorithm that is going to affect,

for you, how you see different types of content.

We are not going to keep resurfacing again and again a certain type

of content based on how you have interacted with it before.

In the same way that maybe there were filter

bubbles 20 years ago, 30 years ago, down to

the newspaper you read or the TV channel you used to watch.

Essentially, there are two ways of constructing a timeline.

Via a computer it will direct stuff to me that it thinks I am

Yours is more or less chronology of the people

I wonder whether you still think the chronology works.

The chronology for us is really vital because people come to Twitter

to just discover what is happening in the world right now

Now we're much more about news then we are about social media.

We move from social media part of the App Store

and the Google Place store into the news area in both of those

and I think that gives an indication of where we see ourselves.

One interesting aspect of this year of such interesting politics

is people have said, don't use Twitter to judge what's

I am guessing most of the tweets on Brexit were for Remain?

On Brexit, there were definitely more tweets about Leave,

talking about Leave than there were about Remain.

But if you looked at the individual accounts that were tweeting

about Leave or Remain, it was almost exactly 50-50,

which is pretty much how it turned out in the referendum result

Fake news stories have become an issue.

Is Twitter the right company to start trying to decide this

point needs to be removed because it is the spreading

We are definitely not in the business of policing

the content to that extent in terms of deciding what is true

When it comes to journalism, that is not what Twitter's about.

We take the issue extremely seriously.

How do you take it seriously, other than to say, to flag up

stories that you don't think are true?

From the start we have always verified journalists and real news

networks to make it clear from when you see the tweet

And that is something we have done for years.

We have also recently partnered with a group called

the First Draft News Coalition and they are a group of news

organisations and academics who are coming together to get these

meaty topics around news at the moment and to look

at solutions and ways we can work together so it is not tech companies

policing journalism, and we can find a way to make it

clear for users what is real, what isn't real, or where

That is all we have time for. We will watch the debate in Parliament

about Brexit tomorrow and I will be back in this chair tomorrow evening.

Good night. We are in for some mild weather,

certainly a change to what we have been used to in the last couple of

weeks. The wind is coming in from the south and it will be

particularly mild. If you