Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (EFE).- Caminando Fronteras has asked the Prosecutor’s Office to open an investigation for the crime of omission of the duty of relief due to the circumstances in which 36 people died in the south of Gran Canaria after more than ten hours waiting for for a Moroccan patrol boat to arrive, when they had had a Maritime Rescue ship just an hour away from their inflatable.
This group that helps migrants has filed a complaint with the State Attorney General’s Office, although the case has already been referred to the Provincial Prosecutor’s Office of Las Palmas, the closest to the facts, to carry out the first inquiries, has confirmed to EFE the superior prosecutor of the Canary Islands, María Farnés Martínez.
This is the second investigation that has been opened on this case, after the one announced the day after the tragedy was known by the Ombudsman, who has requested explanations from both Salvamento and the Regional Coordination Center of the Canary Islands, the body in charge of the Civil Guard that coordinates the search for small boats in the Atlantic.
Reports to the United Nations
The spokesperson for Caminando Fronteras, Helena Maleno, has detailed to EFE that they have also brought the case to the attention of two United Nations agencies: UNHCR, because they have reports that several people were traveling on board the pneumatics likely to request refuge or international protection , and Unicef, because three children perished in the shipwreck. The corpse of one of them was recovered by a rescue helicopter and transferred to Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
In its semi-annual report on the deaths in the boats bound for Spain, published this Thursday, this group already describes as “omission of the duty to help” what happened with that pneumatic boat, which was located on June 20 at around 8:00 p.m. of the islands) by a rescue plane 162 kilometers south of Gran Canaria.
At that moment, the Guardamar Calliope was helping another inflatable boat with immigrants some 46 kilometers from where they were (approximately one hour sailing at rescue speed, 25 knots), but Maritime Rescue gave instructions to return to the port from Arguineguín, because a Moroccan patrol boat was going to take care of that assistance.
However, it did not arrive until after 6:00 in the morning of the following day, when the occupants of the inflatable were already in the water. 24 people survived, who were transferred to the Sahara by the patrol boat Al Mansour, and only two bodies were recovered.
Salvage defends itself
Maritime Rescue has defended its performance in this rescue with three arguments: it happened in waters under shared rescue responsibility between Spain and Morocco, but closer to the Sahara; the Calliope had to return to land so that the people on board received assistance; and her staff never knew that the occupants of the pneumatic boat that ultimately sank were in danger.
The possibility that the initial investigations that the Prosecutor’s Office is going to undertake become a formal investigation depends, first of all, on whether it considers itself competent to examine the matter, a decision that will be influenced by several factors, including whether it is considered or not that the shipwreck occurred in “Spanish” waters, EFE judicial sources have pointed out.
For the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the place where that boat sank is within the search and rescue (SAR) area of responsibility shared by Spain and Morocco since at least 2012.
However, the maritime borders between Spain and Morocco in the Canary Islands are not defined in any international agreement and, even less, off the coast of the Sahara, which the UN considers territory pending decolonization (the same has been ruled by the Court of Justice of the EU, when examining the fishing agreements of Brussels with Morocco regarding the Saharawi fishing ground).
On the other hand, for Morocco there is no doubt: the waters of the Sahara belong to it. In fact, Rabat unilaterally approved in 2020 two laws that delimited its maritime spaces in the Canary Islands, including the waters located in front of the Sahara.
Identified the body of the child
There is also the circumstance that one of the deceased was picked up by a Spanish service, a rescue helicopter, and his body is now in the Legal Medicine Institute of Las Palmas.
This is a four-year-old boy, whom an Ivorian family that is currently in Morocco has already photographically identified, a source from the forensic institute has specified to EFE, which is waiting for DNA tests to be carried out so that the judge confirms the identity and decides on the body.
Caminando Fronteras, who has collaborated in the identification, assures that his mother is a woman who was going to get on the same inflatable with the child and another child, a baby. However, she and the baby were separated from the little one at the moment of boarding and left on land, waiting for another boat. EFE