Gasol recounts dramatic migrant rescue

BARCELONA: Spanish basketball giant Marc Gasol, star of the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies, recounted the dramatic sea rescue of a migrant off the Libyan coast in which he took part, in a video sent to AFP Thursday.

World champion with Spain in 2006 and a three-time NBA All Star, the 33-year-old is travelling on a rescue ship belonging to NGO Proactiva Open Arms, whose two vessels sail back and forth in the Mediterranean to rescue migrants in distress. On Tuesday morning, he contributed to the rescue of a 40-year-old woman from Cameroon who was drifting on a deflated dinghy next to the bodies of a little boy and another woman. “It’s a real shame to be here in the Mediterranean with so little help for the people of Open Arms,” he said in a video sent to AFP by the NGO. In a photo published on his Twitter account, Gasol is seen wearing a red helmet, the NGO’s grey t-shirt and sunglasses, helping lift the stretcher carrying the woman from a dinghy to the main ship.

“Frustration, anger, and helplessness. It’s unbelievable how so many vulnerable people are abandoned to their deaths at sea,” he tweeted then. In an interview with Spanish daily El Pais, Gasol said the photo that went viral in 2015 of Syrian boy Aylan Kurdi lying dead on a Turkish beach shocked him into more awareness of the migrant issue.