Betrayal

Now that the dust settled, we now know what happend with the Egyptian Ferry, and why no distress signal was sent or why so many people were lost. The truth is more disturbing than I could've imagined. Rescue boats picked up at least 362 survivors from an Egyptian ferry that caught fire and sank in the Red Sea, apparently so fast there was no time for a distress signal. But more than 1,000 missing passengers and crew were feared drowned, officials said Saturday. [...]

Many survivors said the fire began about 90 minutes after departure, but the ship kept going. Their accounts varied on the fire's location, with some saying it was in a storeroom or the engine room.

"Fire erupted in the parking bay where the cars were," said passenger Ahmed Abdel Wahab, 30, an Egyptian who works in Saudi Arabia. "We told the crew: 'Let's turn back, let's call for help,' but they refused and said everything was under control.

"We heard an explosion and five minutes later the ship sank," he added.

Wahab claimed that as passengers began to panic, "crew members locked up some women in their cabins."

What this story doesn't tell us is the fact that the captain and crew- who al jazeera reported have all survived- abandoned the ship and left the passangers to die.

Survivors of the Red Sea ferry disaster have said the captain and his crew were first to flee the burning ship by lifeboat and abandoned them to their fate.

Some passengers plucked alive from the sea or from boats after the ferry caught fire and sank early on Friday said on Saturday that the crew had told them not to worry about a fire below deck and even ordered them to take off lifejackets.

[...] Shihata Ali, an Egyptian survivor, said the passengers had told the captain about the fire but he told them not to worry. "We were wearing lifejackets but they told us there was nothing wrong, told us to take them off and they took away the lifejackets," he said. "Then the boat started to sink and the captain took a boat and left." Another survivor said: "The captain was the first to leave and we were surprised to see the boat sinking." Other survivors also reported that the crew played down the gravity of the situation and withheld lifejackets. There wasn't enough for everybody and for them to wear. They were apparently afraid they would run out if they handed them out, so they withheld the Lifejackets from the passengers, whose lives were their responsibility. Abd al-Rauf Abd al-Nabi said: "There was a fire but the crew stopped the people from putting on lifejackets so that it wouldn't cause a panic." Nadir Jalal Abd al-Shafi, another arrival on the same rescue boat, said: "There was a blaze down below. The crew said 'Don't worry, we will put it out'. When things got really bad the crew just went off in the lifeboats and left us on board."

Unbelieveable. I am so disgusted by this. The captain and the crew negligence have lead to the death of more than 900 people. There shouldn't even be a trial at this point. They should be taken to Tahrir square and shot. As far as I am concerned, for them to 1) withhold lifejackets , 2) lock people in their cabins, and then 3) flee the boat first is nothing short but the intentional murder of more than 900 people whose lives were their responsbility. Those men betrayed their duty and killed about 1000 men, women and children. Killing them wouldn't even be enough to make them pay for their betrayal, but it would be a good start.