Amnesty International (AI) has pointed directly to the Spanish and Moroccan police as responsible for the tragedy at the Melilla fence on June 24 in which around twenty migrants died. The NGO has issued its conclusions on what happened at the border, denouncing the violation of the rights of the group of some 2,000 migrants, the majority from Sub-Saharan Africa, who tried to cross the Moroccan border to access Spanish territory.
In the document, to which La Vanguardia has had access, the NGO accuses the Spanish police of not allowing the Red Cross access to the area where the avalanche occurred, after a group of migrants tried to break down one of the doors. to access the Spanish border side.
This issue has generated great controversy because it has been questioned whether the avalanche, which caused the death of at least 23 people, occurred on the Spanish or Moroccan side. Even the opposition parties have called for the resignation of the Interior Minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, for insisting that the events occurred in the Moroccan zone and outside Spanish territory.
AI questions the work of the agents, whom it accuses of not caring for the injured during the jump over the fence. In his opinion, the Spanish authorities "did not help" those who managed to cross into Spanish territory "thus violating their rights in multiple ways", such as the right to adequate care, and not to suffer torture or ill-treatment. For the NGO, this failure to proceed implies a breach by Spain of its obligations to protect the right to life, and implies, in turn, a cruel way of acting.
The NGO is not forgetting Morocco either, which it accuses of “prioritizing” the transfer of corpses and ensuring the safety of its agents rather than caring for injured migrants and refugees. For this reason, in the opinion of Amnesty International, the deaths were more than those recognized so far, and they accuse the Moroccan and Spanish authorities of "contributing" to the death of at least 37 people and dozens of injuries.
In addition, it denounces that six months later, neither the Moroccan nor the Spanish courts have initiated investigations into what they consider to be human rights violations in the hands of officials from both countries for, among other things, denying emergency medical assistance to the wounded or the repeated use of tear gas against people who have no way to escape and are in a confined space.
The last time that Grande-Marlaska gave explanations about the tragedy of the fence was on November 30 in Congress. There, in the face of harsh criticism from almost the entire parliamentary arc, he once again defended the "proportionate" action of the Civil Guard in the face of what he described as a "violent assault" on the border.
The head of the Interior acknowledged, as he did in September, that returns were carried out at the border, although he prefers to refer to them as "border rejections". On that occasion, Interior did not specify how many had been carried out with the help of Moroccan gendarmes who set foot on Spanish soil to carry them out. The Ombudsman figures the returns at 470.
