The Information Headquarters of the Civil Guard has delivered a report to Judge María Tardón of the National Court, adding to the one already presented by the National Police, which this week has been at the center of controversy over the possible involvement of Morocco in the migratory avalanche in Ceuta. The report from the armed institute contains some references to the prior communications made with intelligence agencies in the days before July 31, according to sources familiar with the investigation, but it is quite brief, as the magistrate only requested details about the prior warnings and the deaths of the migrants.
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The head of the Instruction Court Number 3 of the National Court, María Tardón, requested on July 31 from the Foreigners Police Station of the National Police to analyze “whether we are facing a concerted action or directed by any organization or criminal group and how many identification elements of those who might have participated in such actions, if there is any record of it.”
Four days later she added another request directed to the Civil Guard to inform her “of the device developed by the different Civil Guard forces deployed in the territory; particularly regarding the rescue operations of people located in Spanish territorial waters, their known personal circumstances, as well as, in the case of deceased persons, if the cause and date of death were recorded, and in the case of survivors, their identity and location data that could have been collected.” But, in addition, she asked the Civil Guard units in Ceuta to clarify if they had “any information from the days prior to such events that could have alerted about their possible occurrence.”
According to sources with access to the case, the Information Headquarters has submitted a report of only five pages responding exclusively to that request. Regarding the prior warnings, the Benemérita’s report confirms that there were previous communications with different state Information and Intelligence agencies — without explicitly mentioning the National Intelligence Center (CNI) — according to the consulted sources aware of the content, although none of those communications could anticipate the scale of the massive entry of 80,000 people that overwhelmed the border.
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The Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, has been defending since the beginning of this crisis that there were no prior warnings that something so extraordinary was going to happen, in a narrative that clashes with that of the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, who has maintained that there were warnings about what could occur.
The National Police also informed the judge of two warnings that the National Immigration and Borders Center (CENIF) issued to the border brigades in Ceuta and Melilla on July 28 and 29 due to a “high” probability of entries by swimming, although the warnings, which this newspaper has accessed, added: “It cannot be assured that this will happen, but when this type of activity has been detected on social networks and other forums, it has sometimes materialized.”
