The black box aboard the ferry which sank off the coast of Kyrenia had been turned off two days prior to its sinking, the Turkish Cypriot Kyrenia district court heard on Friday, as the case against the nine people arrested in the accident’s aftermath continued.
According to newspaper Yeniduzen, the final recording available on the black box was the sound of footsteps, which was recorded at 8.39pm on August 28. As such, no recording of the day of the accident, August 30, exists.
News website Gundem Kibris, meanwhile, reported that a police representative told the court on Friday that earlier recordings recovered from the black box included conversations regarding technical malfunctions, and that at one point, someone was heard saying, “this boat will not survive the season”.
Additionally, it reported that the black box recorded conversations regarding the fact that the boat took on water during previous voyages, with those conversations said to have involved its captain, Mustafa Oz, who is among the nine people currently being held in custody.
Regarding the fact that it was then turned off, the police representative told the court that the device “is the captain’s responsibility”, and that the Turkish Cypriot ports department “was not informed” of any decision to turn it off, as would have been required by law.
At the end of the day’s proceedings, all nine suspects – Oz, seven other members of the boat’s crew, and one representative of its operating company, Filo Denizcilik – all had their remands extended for a further seven days. They will now remain in custody until the case’s next hearing on October 16.
Families gather outside Kyrenia courthouse
Meanwhile, the families of the dead and the missing gathered outside the courthouse in Kyrenia on Friday morning ahead of the day’s hearing, demanding justice for their lost loved ones.
Meryem Kurt, whose son Ismail Kurt died aboard the ferry, said that the nine people who are currently in custody were “simply following orders”, and that “the guilty ones are those who authorised the voyage”.
“They should bring the real culprits to court,” she said.
Meanwhile, Dilek Ozbiler, whose mother Nuray Zeytun Ozbiler was also among the dead, said that her “pain is indescribable”, and demanded that figures of greater authority be brought before the court.
“It is not just the captain and the crew who brought this fire upon the homes of 28 families … Our pursuit of justice is to prevent such tragedies from happening again,” she said, with the mention of 28 families a reference to the 27 people who are confirmed to have died and the one who remains missing after the disaster.
Later on Friday, three more bodies which were recovered from the seas off Kyrenia this week were identified as Turkish national Ayhan Ozcan, his wife, Russian national Julia Ozcan, and Cypriot Suleyman Erdogan.
The ferry sank shortly after leaving the new port of Kyrenia en route to the Turkish port of Tasucu, with 259 passengers and eight crew on board. Search operations are continuing in the hope of locating the one person who remains unaccounted for.
