Thursday, March 28

The Prosecutor’s Office calls the head of the operation and two other civil guards who intervened in the Melilla tragedy to testify


The Immigration Department prosecutor, Beatriz Sánchez, who is investigating the death of several dozen people on the Melilla border on June 24, has asked to question the head of the operation and two other civil guards who participated in that device, according to advance the Chain Being and sources close to the case confirm to elDiario.es. Specifically, he intends to take a statement from Lieutenant Colonel Arturo Ortega, who was most responsible as accidental head of the Melilla Command and the pilot and co-pilot of the helicopter that flew over the border. He will also question the operator of the drone that recorded part of the images.

PSOE and PP knock down the request of the commission of investigation into the tragedy of Melilla

Know more

The Prosecutor’s Office opened on June 28 an investigation into the death of several dozen people on the Melilla border. The then State Attorney General, Dolores Delgado, entrusted the Specialized Immigration Prosecutor’s Office to investigate the circumstances of the death of the victims in Moroccan territory. The official count of victims speaks of 23 deaths while human rights organizations raise the number of victims to 37 people.

The criminal investigation opened by the Public Ministry came after the Government left the investigation into these events in the hands of the Ombudsman and the United Nations Committee had demanded an investigation to prevent “the repetition of such tragedies.”

In parallel, this Friday, the spokespersons of the parliamentary groups have seen behind closed doors in the Interior Commission of the Congress of Deputies 40 files with the videos of that tragedy. After seeing the images, the Socialists have defended that the law was complied with, while the PP has insisted on requesting the resignation of the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska. Unidas Podemos, for its part, has denounced “omission of relief” and EH Bildu has assured that there was an “exchange of stones” between migrants and Civil Guard agents.

Most of the parliamentary spokespersons have censured the choice of a committee behind closed doors without the presence of any person in charge of the Interior, who has delegated a person in charge of the Civil Guard of Melilla, for being the “custodian” of the “totality”. of the recordings that were also sent to the Prosecutor’s Office and the Ombudsman in the framework of their investigations.

Five months after the incident in the border perimeter in which at least 23 migrants died, practically all the parliamentary groups maintain their criticism of Marlaska’s management. The groups, mainly the partners of the Executive – in favor of calling an investigation commission -, question the version of the Ministry and want to know if there were deaths on Spanish soil, as the BBC maintained in a documentary. Criticism has focused, in fact, on whether Moroccan gendarmes went to Spain within a device that Grande-Marlaska defends as “proportional” in the face of a “very violent attack” in which fifty civil guards were injured.

In line with what was sustained by the Ombudsman, in addition, some spokespersons criticize that Civil Guard agents threw stones at migrants who were trying to reach Spain and want to know why medical aid was not offered to the injured. They also question the use of riot control material and the rejections at the border, which the Ombudsman estimated at 470 outside the law.




www.eldiario.es