Twenty-fifth body found near Kyrenia ferry wreckage, three remain missing

A twenty-fifth body was recovered from the sea off the coast of Kyrenia on Wednesday as search operations continue following the sinking of a passenger ferry off the town’s coast in August, Turkish Cypriot ‘prime minister’ Unal Ustel said. The body is the second of the day to be recovered, and the fifth to be recovered since the weekend, with just three of the ferry’s initial 259 passengers now remaining unaccounted for, 38 days after it sank shortly after setting sail from the new port of Kyrenia en route to the Turkish port of Tasucu on August 30. Ustel on Wednesday said that “necessary examinations and procedures have been initiated to identify the body”, and that “since the day of the disaster, our state has mobilised all its resources to locate all the missing individuals and has continued search operations without interruption”. “Efforts will proceed with the same determination until all the missing persons are found,” he said. Following the disaster, a total of nine people – the boat’s captain, now named as Mustafa Oz, seven members of his crew, and one representative of its operating company, Filo Denizcilik – were arrested, with all nine remaining in custody. They most recently appeared in court last Friday, while it was said at a previous hearing that a crack had appeared on the side of the boat almost two months before it sank 30 and that, according to photographs recovered from the first mate’s mobile phone, the repairs were carried out on June 17. Questions remain over ship’s certificate, captain’s licence Those repairs were done by Oz and the boat’s crew, with the court hearing that they were carried out at a port in Cyprus, but that the Turkish Cypriot authorities were not informed, despite Oz and Filo Denizcilik being obliged to inform them under such circumstances. The repairs were carried out just 15 days after Istanbul-based ship classification firm Turk Loydu had certified the boat as seaworthy. Turkish Cypriot ‘transport minister’ Faiz Sucuoglu had suggested that the ferry had been involved in an unreported “minor accident” prior to its sinking, and asked, “what fault does Turk Loydu have here?”. However, a police representative told the court on Friday on this matter that “no such evidence has been found”. Previously, it had been said in court that Oz had bought his Honduran captain’s licence for $3,500. A police representative said Oz had said under questioning that he had initially obtained a licence in Turkey, but that it had become invalid after he did not work as a boat captain for ten years.