The Spanish Interior Minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, demanded in a letter in the early hours of this Wednesday to the Director General of the Police, Francisco Pardo Piqueras, that, “if true,” he inform him from when the police force had information indicating that Moroccan agents directed the mass entry of people into Ceuta with a purpose other than migration. The Interior Minister takes this step after the immigration unit of the Foreigners’ Police Station sent a report to the National Court stating that the entry of about 70,000 people on July 30 and 31 may have been planned to overwhelm the border access.
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The content of this report, which was submitted to Judge María Tardón and previewed by El Español, states that Moroccan gendarmes under the orders of plainclothes agents guided the migrants to overwhelm the border system. According to police sources also confirming to this newspaper, the document analyzes in detail all the images and videos seen on the ground. This is information that Minister Grande-Marlaska was unaware of, according to the official letter addressed to the Police Director.
In this letter, accessed by EL PAÍS, Grande-Marlaska insists that he needs “to know since when the National Police had this information, absolutely essential” so that, beyond judicial actions, he, as Interior Minister, says, “can exercise my responsibility and, ultimately, the Government can make the appropriate decisions regarding the migration crisis in Ceuta.” The head of the department recalls that it is up to him to make decisions on “state defense” and thus shows that he was unaware of what was drafted by the National Immigration and Borders Center (CENIF), sent this Monday to the National Court.
The official letter adds that this is information that, “having declared the situation of interest for national security as provided in Law 36/2015, on National Security, must be immediately made available to the members of the National Security Council, the functional authority designated by royal decree of the President of the Government, and other bodies with competencies in this area.” All this, Marlaska says, “regardless of the judicial actions that may be carried out, which, for now, are in an incipient stage,” and which cannot be an obstacle for the State Security Forces and Corps to detail these matters to him. “I would appreciate it if you inform me as soon as possible about the truthfulness of what has been published,” he concludes.
The question of whether Morocco was behind what happened at the end of July is central to this crisis, since the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, has publicly defended that there is no indication to suspect that Rabat could have organized the migrants. Sánchez, in an interview on Cadena SER this Monday, said that the neighboring country offered “instant, immediate cooperation” and assured that close collaboration was underway for returns. The PSOE leader insisted that mafias could be behind what happened but followed the line previously set by Marlaska, who said there was never enough information that such a large number of people would cross the border.
The fact is that María Tardón has this police document on her desk, which she forwarded to the Prosecutor’s Office this Tuesday for their opinion. The judge decided on August 3 to take a first step to start an investigation after the party Iustitia Europa reported the mass entry of people into the autonomous city. Before opening a case, the investigator requested various police reports from both the Police and the Civil Guard to clarify whether what happened was “a concerted or directed action” by some “criminal group” or any other actor and if, in that case, the Government had any prior information.
Once the Foreigners’ Unit responded, the judge sent the information to the Prosecutor’s Office to clarify whether the matter falls under the jurisdiction of the National Court, according to judicial sources. It is expected that, after the public prosecutor’s response, the judge will issue an order deciding whether there is indeed sufficient material to start an investigation and whether it should remain in that judicial body because it affects state security or be transferred to an ordinary court in Ceuta.
In the complaint by Iustitia Europa, it was argued that the “mobilization” of migrant people from Morocco to Ceuta could not “be classified as an ordinary or spontaneous migratory phenomenon” due to the “temporal dimension and the concentration of thousands of individuals simultaneously throwing themselves into the sea from the Moroccan coasts.” “We are facing an instrumentalization of migratory flows that, due to their volume and manner of execution, represents an overwhelming of the capacities of the State Security Forces and Corps and reception services, compromising territorial integrity and public security at an external border of the European Union,” it stated.
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