Search efforts in and around the area where a ferry sank off the coast of Kyrenia in August are continuing “inch by inch”, Turkish Cypriot ‘transport minister’ Faiz Sucuoglu said on Wednesday.

“We are working 550 metres below sea level. Just the robot descending takes four and a half or five hours. Pulling anything which is found up to the surface takes about eight or ten hours. It is a very slow process. With patience and the rule of working 24 hours a day, certain points have been reached,” he told Kibris TV.

He added that further searches will continue in the area around where the boat sank, and that search efforts “could be expanded in the coming days”, even though the robot being used to search the seafloor only has a field of visibility of around 10 metres.

Additionally, he made reference to the ongoing court case involving the nine people who were arrested following the ferry disaster, saying that the police’s investigation into the matter is “continuing intensively”.

“We will follow this investigation and this judicial process wherever it leads, no matter where it goes. This is one of the greatest priorities of the government and the prime minister. We will pursue it to the very end,” he said.

18 confirmed dead, 10 still missing

The ferry capsized shortly after leaving the new port of Kyrenia en route to the Turkish port of Tasucu at a little after midday on August 30, with 259 passengers and eight crew members on board. A total of 18 people are confirmed to have died in the accident, while 10 people remain unaccounted for.

The nine arrestees are the ferry’s captain, Mustafa Oz, seven members of its crew, and one director of its operating company, Filo Denizcilik. They remain in custody, having most recently appeared in court last Friday.

At that hearing, it was heard that the Turkish Cypriot authorities were not informed about a crack which had appeared on the ferry’s left side on June 17, despite both Oz and Filo Denizcilik having been obliged to inform the authorities.

Previously, it had been said in court that the captain Oz had bought his Honduran captain’s licence for $3,500. A police representative said at the time that Oz had said under questioning that he had initially obtained a licence in Turkey, but that it had become invalid after he did not work as a boat captain for 10 years.

The Cyprus Mail has contacted Honduras’ directorate-general of merchant maritime in an attempt to verify the authenticity of the licence.