“They hit us and watched us drown”

French security forces are employing deadly tactics to stop small boats from entering the French overseas territory of Mayotte. These illegal practices include circling and colliding with small, overloaded boats, sometimes causing them to capsize.

A year-long investigation with Le Monde, Der Spiegel, The Times and Arte proves for the first time that the French police are responsible for the deaths or disappearances of at least 24 people – including pregnant women and children – during violent interceptions at sea off the coast of Mayotte. The incidents span from 2007 to July 2025.

The revelations come as Paris, under pressure from London, has announced a shift in the English Channel – that French forces will soon be permitted to intercept migrant boats at sea, a move that has raised concern among the French search and rescue authorities, police unions and government ministers.

Tens of thousands of people attempt the crossing from the nearby Comorian Island of Anjouan each year in search of better work opportunities, healthcare and education on the French Island, which is situated off the east coast of Africa. It’s estimated 10,000 people have drowned while trying to make this journey since 1995.

METHODS

Journalists collected 20 detailed survivor testimonies, including accounts from recent shipwrecks, as well as interviewing former smugglers, local residents and children who made the crossing, many of whom described lasting trauma.

In parallel, the team gained access to judicial and administrative case files documenting past incidents, as well as police and gendarmerie reports. These provided corroboration of incidents where police vessels collided with migrant boats.

To cross-check these accounts, reporters conducted confidential interviews with six serving and former officials from the French interior and defense ministries who had been posted to Mayotte. Their statements confirmed that aggressive tactics were part of routine practice.

Finally, the investigation relied on official statistics and records from the prefecture of Mayotte, maritime surveillance centers and court archives, allowing reporters to establish a count of at least 24 deaths linked to interceptions since 2007.

Together, these methods revealed a consistent pattern: while authorities publicly frame operations as rescue missions, evidence from witnesses, documents and insiders show that dangerous interception practices are commonplace.

STORYLINES

In the early hours of 15 July 2025, a small fishing boat known as a kwassa approached the shores of Mayotte after a ten-hour journey from the Comoros. On board were 27 passengers, including children and the elderly, hoping to reach French territory. Instead, the crossing ended in tragedy.

Zoubert, 25, had boarded the kwassa in Anjouan, Comoros, to return to Mayotte, where he grew up. Land was in sight when a French police vessel struck them. “Our boat tore apart, everyone fell into the sea,” he recalled. He says the officers pulled back about 30 meters and waited up to 15 seconds before reacting. “Everyone was screaming. They watched us drown without moving.” Zoubert claims he saw a teenage girl and an elderly man disappear beneath the water.

Ahamada, 24, was traveling with his young niece and nephew. He remembers their pilot trying to flee towards the beach when the police boat rammed them from behind. “That’s when they hit us,” she said. After the impact, he saw his four-year-old nephew sink into the water. “It’s really vile. If they had let us land, they could have arrested us without killing people.”

Farid Djassadi, 31, told us how both his legs were severed by the engine of a police boat that collided with the small boat he had boarded in Anjouan. The impact threw him overboard. Court documents we obtained detail the incident, noting that the police boat’s engine was too powerful, exceeding authorised limitations and that none of the officers had completed the required training to drive the boat. Despite multiple investigations, prosecutions have largely targeted smugglers, not security forces.

Other survivors echo these accounts. In total twenty people described police circling boats to churn up waves until water flooded the fragile vessels, or colliding with the bow to destabilise them.

Six officials from the interior and armed forces described the use of collisions, wave-making, flash-ball launchers and even nets to force kwassas to stop.

One senior gendarme admitted that patrol boats sometimes “cut across the route” of migrant vessels or even “hit their bows” to block them. “We get behind the boat, into its wake, and then we go after it,” he explained. “Once we’re in their trail, they stop because their lives are at risk — but if they keep going, we are forced to ram them.” Another officer justified creating “artificial waves” by steering in S-shaped movements, which flood the kwassas and force them to stop, even if it risks capsizing them.

A former maritime affairs official who served nearly 15 years in Mayotte criticized the lack of training and seafaring knowledge among police units. “They might get three weeks of training at best, then shadow colleagues on interceptors. They’re sent out without the proper skills,” he said.

France announced it would now authorize the “boarding” of boats leaving its northern coast for Britain — a concession to London’s demands amid record crossings. For years, French authorities resisted such a shift, warning that police-style interceptions at sea posed grave risks. Hervé Berville, then Secretary of State for the Sea, wrote to Prime Minister Gabriel Attal in spring 2024 urging against it. In his letter, he described such actions as “ineffective and even dangerous,” carrying risks both for officers and for migrants, including “the risk of mass drownings.”

Nevertheless, the Ministry of the Interior pressed forward, arguing that standard rescue operations were insufficient as crossings surged past 28,000 since the start of the year. According to one senior official, the new doctrine envisions the possibility of encircling migrant boats to force them back or stop them mid-sea.

The Mayotte investigation suggests what this may mean in practice. For more than two decades, aggressive interception maneuvers — collisions, wave-making, ramming — have been used out of sight in the Indian Ocean, causing at least 24 deaths.