We won't rest until we know what happened, father tells Channel tragedy inquiry

Independent

26-03-2025

The family of a man who is among those missing from the deadliest Channel crossing on record 'will not rest' until they know what happened to him, an inquiry has heard.
Zanyar Mustafa Mina was 20 when he left Kurdistan, with the last message to his family on November 23 2021 saying 'I'm leaving now'.
An independent probe, led by Sir Ross Cranston, has vowed to find out the truth of what happened when at least 27 people died as an inflatable boat capsized while attempting the journey to the UK on November 24 2021.
The inquiry had heard that 26 people were identified among the dead, with four people missing and another person whose body was found, but whose identity has not been confirmed.
It cannot be certain how many people were on board the boat that night, but the French authorities believe there were 33 people, including 13 women and eight children, the inquiry had heard.
Mr Mustafa Mina was classed as missing, and was described to the Cranston Inquiry as energetic, smart and 'always wanted to help people'.
His father Mustafa Mina Nabi told the Cranston Inquiry in an audio account that not knowing what happened to him is 'awful'.
He said: 'No one has found his body, which makes it even worse.
'I am very upset, but no one has told us what they are doing to locate those still missing. In three years, we have been given no information.
'I want to come to France and England to look for my son. Sometimes I still believe he could be in a hospital or prison somewhere.
'Not knowing is the worst part, and my family and I hope that the inquiry will investigate properly what happened to those still missing.
'We will not rest until we know what happened to Zanyar.'
The inquiry is set to hear 27 accounts from family in the last two days of hearings.
The father of Afrasia Ahmed Mohamed said when his body was returned to the family in Iraq he cried so much it affected his vision.
'My family had to help me find the bathroom because I could not see,' Ahmed Mohammed Ahmed said.
He described life as 'very difficult' in Iraq and said his son left in October 2021, before the family were contacted to send DNA samples to France which confirmed he was dead.
'We have suffered a terrible loss, and we've suffered more in the three years since the incident, when it felt like the UK and French authorities were not taking action,' he said.
Abdullahi Mohamud Hassan, the brother of Halima Mohammed Shikh, from Somalia, also told the inquiry the mother-of-three left the country in 2019 because of political instability and violence.
He said he only received a picture of her face in the morgue around December 14 2021, adding: 'I find it so painful thinking about what happened to her.'
'Halima's children continue to suffer the loss of their mother, but we are doing everything we can as a family to support them and give them the love they need,' he said of her family and children still in Somalia.
Her cousin, Ali Areef, who is a Norwegian national, told the inquiry that he met her in Paris weeks before the tragedy and that she seemed 'very low and worried all the time'.
He described contacting Somalian survivor Issa Mohamed Omar, who told him he was with Ms Mohammed Sikh until she died, and that he heard her shouting her last words 'help me, I don't want to die' after the boat capsized.
In an account to the inquiry, he said: 'I will never take a ferry across the Channel again or go to Paris.
'This tragic incident is never far away from my mind, and it makes me feel sick to think about crossing the Channel in a ferry where others, including a member of my family, lost their lives because there was no other way to cross.'
Meanwhile, the father of Mohammed Hussein Mohammedie said he received his son's body back in Kurdistan on his 20th birthday.
Hussein Mohammedie said: 'Mohammed was often complaining that I had not been brave enough to leave Iraq. He wanted to be different. He wanted to be brave.'
The last time they spoke was on the evening of November 23 2021, before he got on the boat and the whole family gathered around the phone to hear from him.
His death was confirmed after he sent a photo to a Kurdish journalist who went to see the bodies after the news of the incident broke.
He also spoke to a Kurdish survivor of the wreckage who described people in the water taking off their life jackets because of the cold and pain, saying 'they wanted to sink and die'.
'But not my son. He wanted to live,' his father said.
'I was told by the survivor that my son was the last one alive before they rescued the survivor. He told me that if they had rescued them half an hour sooner that my son would be alive.
'It has affected us in a way that we will never forget.
'If what the survivor told me is right, had the coastguard arrived 30 minutes earlier, my son would have lived, this I cannot bear and can never forgive.'
The evidence continues.