Each morning Zahia leaves the home she shares with her four grandchildren in the Algerian coastal city of Bou Ismaïl and heads to her job cleaning a primary school. For the past year she has lived alone with them, after the death of both her daughters ripped their family apart.
Their tragic story started on 5 October 2021, when Zahia’s youngest daughter, Feryal, then 23, decided to leave Algeria with her husband, Aissa, and their son Amjad, aged 2. At the time neither had jobs – although Aissa worked occasionally as a horseback tour guide – but they were both determined to improve their lives.
Thousands of people every year attempt to cross the western Mediterranean Sea from Algeria to the south of Spain, according to Frontex, the EU’s border agency, paying anything between €900 (£775) and €20,000 to smugglers. Feryal and her family were believed to have paid about €5,000.
Zahia says she had not realised Feryal’s journey to Europe would be clandestine: “She told me she would leave using official documents and that the organiser of the trip would get her a passport. She never told me she was going to migrate illegally.”
The plan had been to reach the Balearic Islands, off the eastern coast of Spain. Feryal and her family were said to have known the smuggler organising the trip beforehand.
Zahia’s other daughter, Siham, then aged 27, received a photo from Feryal just before the boat departed. Feryal appears calm, sitting next to Amjad, who is wearing a blue coat and a woollen hat with a smiling bear on the front. Feryal is shown making a peace sign with her right hand.
It was the last message the family received from them.
Hours turned into days with no communication from Feryal, her husband or the seven other passengers on the boat. Eventually, a few days after the boat’s departure, messages began circulating on Facebook about a small migrant boat that had set off from northern Algeria towards Spain’s Balearic Islands and then disappeared without a trace. With no word from Feryal, Zahia and Siham feared the worst.
There is little help available to families searching for missing loved ones who have travelled illegally, and Zahia and Siham did not have the financial means to obtain a visa and travel to Spain themselves. Algeria intervenes only if the body of an Algerian citizen is found; it then coordinates with Spain through its embassy to complete the identity procedures and covers the costs of returning the body.
So instead, Siham began contacting dozens of activists, rights organisations and other Algerians living in Spain she believed might have information about her sister’s fate. She also posted videos on social media recounting the story, hoping to find a lead.
In one video, reviewed by the Guardian, she says: “I have no father or brother. I took on the responsibility alone and didn’t want to involve my mother so she wouldn’t be burdened. If I had a father or brother, I would have just stayed home crying and left this responsibility to them.”
On 21 October 2021, a Spanish local newspaper, Diario de Ibiza, reported that the Guardia Civil had found two decomposing bodies – one of a woman and the other of a man (later identified as the boat’s captain) – on a beach in Formentera, another Balearic island. According to a burial permit document seen by the Guardian, the two bodies were then interred on 9 November 2021, in the island’s municipal cemetery.
With news of the missing boat spreading on social media, others suspected that one of the bodies might belong to Feryal, though there was no official confirmation. Zahia says Siham was contacted by someone who used to work for an organisation in Spain that helps locate missing migrants and identifying bodies, often through unofficial channels. She says they were told the NGO had information about a body and were asked to provide official documents to assist in the identification process.
There are reports of families being asked to pay hundreds of euros in exchange for information about what has happened to missing loved ones. NGOs, forensic pathologists and funeral home workers in Spain have been investigated for circulating and leaking sensitive images and information related to the bodies of migrants found along the Spanish coasts, allegedly for financial gain.
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Siham was later sent photos taken during her sister’s autopsy via Facebook messenger by the former NGO employee, which Zahia says left her daughter in a state of shock and emotional collapse. In a live broadcast on Facebook, a recording of which has been seen by the Guardian, Siham says her sister’s photos were used to exploit and scam other families of missing migrants.
“They sent my sister’s photos to some families, making them believe the body belonged to their children, just to exploit their pain and ask for money in exchange for more information or for returning the body to the country of origin,” she says. Zahia says Siham told her she was asked for money, but never told her how much or if she paid it.
After Siham’s descriptions matched the body that was found, the authorities got involved and ordered a DNA test, but it took several months to confirm her identity and then even longer for the repatriation process to be completed. The body was finally transferred to Algeria in March 2023.
Zahia says Siham struggled badly after seeing the photos of her dead sister. Then, last year she took her own life, leaving behind her four children. “My daughter couldn’t bear those pictures,” she says.
“She was already suffering from anxiety, but after what she saw she fell into deep depression. She didn’t tell me everything to avoid worrying me. She kept all her pain to herself.”
As she tries to fill the void left by the loss of her two daughters and grandson, Zahia blames the people smugglers and those who exploit relatives searching for loved ones who go missing on dangerous sea crossings. “I sit alone and talk to myself,” she says. “They’ve put us in a miserable state.”
The bodies of Aissa and Amjad, her son-in-law and grandson, have still not been found, and Zahia says she wishes she had taken on the burden of seeking justice for what happened to them all while Siham was still alive.
“She [Siham] had intended to file complaints against all the people who manipulated her during her search for her sister,” Zahia says. “But she died before she could do so.”
