The Diplomat
The Administrative Chamber of the Audiencia Nacional yesterday gave the Ministry of the Interior 24 hours to send the official letter of 10 August in which the State Secretariat for Security justifies the repatriation of minors from Ceuta to Morocco.
The Audiencia is thus processing an appeal filed by the Spanish Network for Immigration and Refugee Aid (Red Española de Inmigración y Ayuda al Refugiado) for violation of fundamental rights due to the Interior Ministry’s instruction endorsing the return of minors from Ceuta to Morocco, and demands that these transfers be suspended as a precautionary measure.
The Spanish Network for Immigration and Refugee Aid explained on Monday that it presented the appeal with the intention of having the instruction issued by the Secretary of State for Security annulled, on the grounds that the Interior’s actions have not followed the protocols and individual treatment required by the treaty between Morocco and Spain.
Yesterday, the organisation considered it “striking” that the Audiencia gives the Interior 24 hours. “It gives us to understand the urgency of resolving this week,” said one of its leaders.
The letter sent by the State Secretariat for Security says: “We ask that the provisions of article 5 of the 2007 Agreement between the Kingdom of Spain and Morocco on cooperation in the field of illegal emigration of unaccompanied minors, their protection and their concerted return be implemented”.
It also states that “the ultimate aim is to guarantee in each case the conditions for effective family reunification of the minor or his or her delivery to the care of a guardianship institution”.
The Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, stated that his department will present the pertinent allegations in response to the Audiencia Nacional’s request to continue with the returns, which he considers to respect “the best interests of the minor”.
Grande-Marlaska assured that “some nuances will be corrected” if justice finally rules against the files processed by the Government of Ceuta, as part of an “exhaustive action” since May, to return the unaccompanied minors who entered from Morocco. This “assisted return” is being processed, he said, by virtue of the 2007 bilateral agreement, which “creates a specific singularity”.
For his part, the president of the Autonomous City of Ceuta, Juan Jesús Vivas, assured yesterday that “none of the minors classified as vulnerable have been transferred” to Morocco in the repatriation process that began last Friday, “regardless of whether there is an individual technical report” on each one.
Vivas acknowledged that the agreement between Spain and Morocco applied to carry out these repatriations does not have a specific protocol, but only establishes that both kingdoms must agree on the procedure for carrying out the returns.
