The Prosecutor's Office wants the judge investigating the alleged denial of relief to the 60 immigrants who sank south of Gran Canaria after ten hours waiting for help to take a statement, first of all, from the Maritime Rescue pilot who during that operation defended that his zodiac I was in an area where Spain was responsible for rescuing them.
That pneumatic was located shortly before 8:00 p.m. on June 20 by the Sasemar 101 rescue plane, some 162 kilometers from the Canary Islands, thanks to an alert and a position provided by the Caminando Fronteras collective, but those responsible for the operation decided to transfer the coordination of the emergency to Rabat because the boat was closer to the Sahara coast and Morocco had promised to send a patrol boat to its aid.
However, it did not arrive until ten hours later, after 6:00 a.m. on June 21, when the launch had already sunk and 36 of its occupants had drowned in the ocean. And all this, with the addition that a Spanish rescue ship had been only an hour away from their position when they were located: the Guardamar Calliope, which was assisting another boat.
In its complaint, a three-page document to which EFE has had access, the Prosecutor's Office defends that there are indications of a crime of omission of the duty of relief in the management that Salvamento Marítimo made of that emergency and asks that two of its officers be summoned employees: the Sasemar 101 pilot and "the person who directed the operations" from the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Rescue Center.
He requests that these two public employees declare as being investigated, not as witnesses, but that does not mean that at this start of the investigation he holds them responsible for anything that happened, the Las Palmas prosecutor spokesperson told EFE.
The account of the alleged facts only mentions that there was an exchange of views between these two Salvage workers on whether the vessel was in the SAR (English acronym for search and rescue) zone under the responsibility of Spain", after which the order was given. the Sasemar 101 aircraft to return to its base in Gran Canaria and control of the operation was transferred to Morocco.
As some of the circumstances that lead them to believe that a crime of refusal of assistance reside in the details of that decision, the Prosecutor's Office requests that they appear for the first time before a judge with the guarantees of an investigated: assisted by a lawyer and with the right not to declare or manifest what they deem appropriate, explains the spokesperson for the Public Ministry.
The pilot's statement is especially relevant because, when the Las Palmas Rescue Coordination Center gave him the coordinates of the possible location of the pneumatics so that he could check them "without entering the Moroccan SAR zone", he answered without hesitation that he was " within our SAR zone", Spanish.
This conversation, revealed the day after the shipwreck by the SER chain, will form part of the investigation, because the Prosecutor's Office asks the judge to "intervene all the conversations" that the Las Palmas Rescue Center held on the 20th and 21st with the Sasemar 101 plane, the Guardamar Calliope, the Moroccan patrol boat, the Navíos Azure ship (a merchant en route that was asked to stay near the pneumatics) and the helicopter 201 (which was sent from Gran Canaria when Rabat informed Spain the sinking).
The sources consulted by EFE have specified that the matter has been brought to court only five days after the Caminando Fronteras collective urged the Prosecutor's Office to intervene, precisely "to obtain all those recordings as soon as possible."
In its complaint, the Public Prosecutor explains why it considers that it has the powers to investigate this tragedy in waters where the Spanish maritime borders are not defined.
In the first place, remember, Spanish state planes -such as the Sasemar 101- are Spanish territory; second, Spain is competent to judge what happens on its ships and aircraft; third, part of the sequence of events takes place in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria; and fourth, the rest of the events occurred in an area where Spain has assumed international responsibility for search and rescue.
The complaint from the Las Palmas Prosecutor's Office is in the hands of the Dean of the courts of the capital of Gran Canaria, which now has to decide which judge in the city is responsible for processing it in accordance with the rules for the distribution of cases.
