Detectives en el Mediterráneo, the Malaga NGO that searches for the disappeared in the Strait

María Ángeles doesn’t know much about football, but she will never forget the English Watford yellow jersey. She was carried by a young sub-Saharan whose body appeared on the coast of Malaga at the beginning of the year. For days, María Ángeles Colsa tracked the soccer kits of several countries until she found her. “She was very strange,” she tells NIUS, so much so that she became the clue that allowed her family to be found. “And finally they knew what happened.” This is the work of María Ángeles and her colleagues at the International Center for the Identification of Missing Migrants. They are in charge of finding those people who tried to cross the Strait and disappeared, both those who survived and those who did not, and then contact their families. “Many times they arrive in Spain and for some reason leave the country without informing the family that they arrived,” says María Ángeles, who in this case tries to trace their journey until she finds them. Other times the work of this NGO focuses on identifying the dozens of bodies rescued from the sea that end up in the morgues of different Spanish towns. “The date of death is one of the keys to identify him,” says María Ángeles because sometimes they don’t even know what boat they came in. The other key is in the clothes. Almost always sportswear and sometimes football kits. The Chelsea shirt, the Paris Saint Germain shirt and some Barcelona pants were some of the few clues to find the family of three of the five bodies that until a few days ago were still waiting in different morgues in the Levant.⚰️ ALGERIAN CORPORATION – SPAIN ⚰️The corpse of an Algerian male is located in Spain on August 19, 2022 in an advanced state of decomposition⚽ Chelsea Football Shirt – Adidas 🛟 Orange Life Vest It must be from June or July, if you recognize him contact us pic.twitter.com/33fUzxQSXN — CIPIMD (@CIPIMD1) September 16, 2022 Collaboration with the authorities “We actually pre-identify,” specifies María Ángeles, who is also a spokesperson for the organization. The official identification is carried out by the Civil Guard first and then by the judge. To do this, they are helped by the information that the authorities transmit to them, such as photos of the belongings of the deceased. “Normally we look for an image of the same garment on the Internet,” says María Ángeles. They are very strict about not showing photographs of the corpse or the clothes they were wearing at the time of death, most of the time almost undone after several days or weeks at sea. Only once have they broken their own rule. It was just under a year ago. After a long time trying unsuccessfully to identify a young Moroccan barely 20 years old, they chose to use a photo of his corpse. “We were desperate,” says María Ángeles. So a fellow photographer retouched the image of the body to make it appear alive. Immediately several friends contacted the organization. No family has yet claimed these people that we still have pending identification!! Share!! People who died on our Algerian and Moroccan coasts We have more and more searches for families pic.twitter.com/gJYXL7CaWD- Héroes del Mar (@Heroesdelmar) September 25, 2022 Difficulties in identificationYour job is not easy because you don’t always families want to recognize the bodies. When it comes to a woman, for example, there tend to be more complications due to the simple fact that “the family doesn’t want to admit that she’s gone,” says María Ángeles. When it’s a man, it’s easier, “unless he came from a very remote place where sometimes there isn’t even Internet,” says María Ángeles. Other times, relatives do not recognize them simply for fear of the mafias. In the event that they are not identified or if the families do not find a way to repatriate their bodies, the bodies are buried in the cemetery of the same coastal town where their bodies were found. The International Center for the Identification of Missing Migrants has its headquarters in Malaga and a network of collaborators in the rest of Spain, Morocco, France, the United Kingdom, Belgium and Switzerland. So far this year they calculate that 35 boats from the coasts of Algeria and Morocco have been shipwrecked before reaching the peninsula. They carried a total of 426 people, of whom María Ángeles’ organization has only counted 103 survivors. The rest, 323 people, are unrecovered victims, for which the organization uses the euphemism “disappeared”… but never forgotten.