As the Ceuta judiciary continues to investigate the case of the expulsion of 55 Moroccan minors from the city in August 2021, the lawyers of the city’s vice-president have called several witnesses. According Ceuta Lighthouseit is not only the Spanish Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, but also four Moroccan officials.
According to the local media, citing legal sources, Mabel Deu’s lawyers want to summon two representatives of the Tetouan Prefecture as well as two others from the National Mutual Aid. The four are said to have taken part in a “meeting held at the border on August 11, 2021”, two days before the start of the deportations. It was during this meeting that Spanish officials, including the vice-president of the city, and Moroccans would have “negotiated” this refoulement operation. The National Mutual Aid would even have, according to the media, committed to welcoming minors until they are taken care of by their families.
The legal sources consulted, El Faro de Ceuta, however, considered that it would be unlikely that the investigating judge of Court No. 2 in Ceuta could summon the four Moroccan officials, specifying that the defense proposal “does not even take up their names, as required by law”.
According to the complaint of the Public Ministry, which attributes an alleged crime of prevarication Deu but also to the Government Delegate in Ceuta, Salvadora Mateos, the two officials would have accepted in Tarajal the expulsion of unaccompanied minors who had irregularly accessed Ceuta in the middle of May 2021 “without any procedure and without checking whether the legal conditions were met”. The defense of Deu seeks to prove that the central government was not only aware, but encouraged and adopted the decisions implemented.