The MV Captain Ali has finished unloading at its humanitarian cargo at 03:30 am Indian time on Sunday 5 July 2009. The ship then sailed out of Chennai Port at 05:20 am.

The Indian Red Cross Society (IRCS) agreed to accept the humanitarian relief and transport it to the Sri Lanka REd Cros to distribute to the Tamil civilians in the concentration camps in the North of Sri Lanka.

As the cargo was being taken off the MV Captain Ali it was loaded directly into 27 containers which will be loaded on to another ship in the coming days and send to Sri Lanka.

As the cargo was being unloaded the Indian Authorities checked each and every pallet with metal detectors and ‘sniffer’ dogs. The cargo was certified for the 4th time (UK Customs, French Customs, Sri Lanka Navy, Indian Customs/Police/Navy) as being entirely humanitarian in nature.

At 03:30 am, after the unloading was completed and the humanitarian cargo was ‘cleared’, the two Mercy Mission passengers on board, Mr. Kristjan Gudmundsson (ex-SLMM monitor) and Mr. Uthayanan Thavarajasingam (volunteer humanitarian worker) were given permission to disembark and were taken by the Immigration Police directly to the Chennai Airport and placed on a British Airways flight to London.

Mercy Mission wishes to express its profound gratitude to the crew and captain of the MV Captain Ali as well as to the passengers who acompanied the desparately needed humanitarian cargo. They have all undergone a trying experience over the past 59 days due to the politicization of humanitarian relief by the Government of Sri Lanka.