It was around 4 am on July 15 when Zoubert – who, like others cited by their first names, wished to remain anonymous – approached the jagged coast of Sada, on the southwest side of the French overseas territory of Mayotte. The 25-year-old man had set off from the island of Anjouan, in the Comoros, 10 hours earlier on board a kwassa-kwassa, a fishing boat measuring less than 10 meters long, in an attempt to reach the French Indian Ocean archipelago. Zoubert had grown up there and wanted to go and reunite with his mother. He had traveled without incident right up to the entrance of the lagoon near Sada, on the other side of a coral reef. This was the final stretch of a nearly 70-kilometer crossing, which thousands of Comorians attempt every year.
His arrival, together with the 26 other passengers on board, was imminent. Barely one kilometer separated them from the shore. However, they had not counted on the vigilance of French authorities, who were patrolling the lagoon's waters. Zoubert and three other kwassa passengers reported that they were then subjected to a violent interception maneuver. According to their account, a French Border Police (PAF) boat deliberately collided with theirs, causing several people to fall into the water, all without any warning or order to stop. "The police were supposed to save us, not kill us," said Zoubert, who claimed to have seen a teenage girl and an elderly man drown.
When contacted for comment, the prosecutor's office in Mamoudzou, the main city in Mayotte, confirmed the deaths of a young woman and an elderly person. However, according to public data compiled by the Regional Operational Search and Rescue Center (CROSS) for the southern Indian Ocean, seven other people, in addition to the two bodies recovered, were reported missing at sea. The authorities received this information a few hours after the shipwreck. When questioned about these rather different figures, the prosecutor's office did not respond.
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