Aug. 18 () –
The Moroccan Justice has sentenced thirteen migrants to two and a half years in prison for their involvement in the jump over the Melilla fence on June 24, which resulted in between 23 and 37 migrants dying, according to different sources.
The Moroccan media have echoed this Thursday the decision of the Court of First Instance of Nador, which has sentenced these thirteen migrants for alleged participation in relation to the assault on the Melilla fence.
“Two and a half years in prison and a fine of 10,000 dirhams (950 euros) against the thirteen migrants tried by the Nador Court of Appeals. A very harsh verdict that shows how the judiciary was mobilized against migrants seeking refuge at the service of the migration policies,” the Moroccan Association for Human Rights (AMDH-Nador) said on Wednesday.
Already in July, the Moroccan Justice sentenced 33 migrants to eleven months in prison for “organizing and facilitating the illegal entry and exit of people in Morocco, for insulting public officials in the exercise of their functions, and for exercising violence against them as well as disobedience.
At 8:40 a.m. on June 24, a group of more than 500 sub-Saharans began to enter Melilla after breaking the access door of the Chinatown border control post with shears, jumping from its roof.
Associations of Spanish civil guards denounced the use of steel bars and cutting tools by the migrants, who acted with “maximum seriousness”, while the Melilla authorities assured that the group was “perfectly organized and (was) violent” .
The AMDH denounced at that time that, after the clashes, the Moroccan security forces handcuffed and piled up immobilized migrants on the ground in the streets of Chinatown in the city of Nador, images that went around the world.
The jump to the Melilla fence in June was the first of these characteristics since the normalization of relations between Spain and Morocco in April 2022, after the change in position of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, on Western Sahara. It also coincided a few days before the NATO summit in Madrid, on June 29 and 30.
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