The Canary Islands Prosecutor’s Office has denounced before the Courts of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria the shipwreck of the pneumatics that sank in the south of the island on June 21 after 10 hours waiting for the arrival of a rescue ship, with a balance of 36 dead, understanding that a crime of omission of the duty of relief could have been committed.
The superior prosecutor of the Canary Islands, María Farnés Martínez, has confirmed to EFE that the Public Ministry “endorses” the complaint presented by the NGO Caminando Fronteras, which provided the Spanish authorities with the position that allowed the location of this pneumatic, and formally requests that a criminal investigation is opened into what happened to clarify the circumstances of that rescue.
With this, there are already two investigations opened for this tragedy that occurred in waters in which Spain and Morocco share international rescue responsibilities, since the Ombudsman also decided, ex officio, to investigate what happened and ask both Maritime Rescue for explanations as well as 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.
The Prosecutor’s Office appreciates evidence of crime in the sequence of events that goes from when that inflatable with 60 occupants was located by a Spanish Maritime Rescue plane 162 kilometers from Gran Canaria (around 8:00 p.m. on June 20) until, 10 hours later (around 6:00 the following day), the Moroccan patrol boat Al Mansour arrived at their position, with the immigrants already in the water.
The complaint by the Prosecutor’s Office does not indicate, for now, any specific person or body as possibly responsible for the omission of the duty to help, but it does defend that there are sufficient indications to open an investigation and carry out evidence to clarify what happened.
The mere presentation of the complaint is also relevant for another reason: it means that the Public Prosecutor considers that Spain is competent to investigate this shipwreck, even if it occurred in an area of ??the Atlantic between the Canary Islands and the Sahara where it is not defined in any treaty what the Spanish maritime border, although search and rescue (SAR) responsibilities are formally assigned by the International Maritime Organization.
At the same time that a plane located the pneumatics, a Spanish rescue ship was helping another boat with immigrants very close to there, the Guardamar Calliope.
This high-capacity ship was some 46 kilometers away from the zódiac that sank later (one hour of navigation at rescue speed, 25 knots), but Salvamento asked it to return to the port of Arguineguín because Rabat had assumed the coordination of that emergency and sent a patrol boat.
However, this did not arrive until after 6 in the morning of the following day, when the occupants of the pneumatic 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.
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 could receive assistance; and her staff never knew that the occupants of the pneumatic boat that ultimately sank were in danger.
The NGO that denounced the facts in the first instance answers those arguments that the closest help was not in Morocco at that time, but in the Spanish ship Guardamar Calliope, already located in the area, and that all pneumatics that sail in the open ocean with that number of people on board is, by definition, in danger.
The circumstance occurs that one of the deceased was picked up by a Spanish service, a rescue helicopter, when on the morning of June 21 he asked Spain to send air resources, and his body is now in the Institute of Legal Medicine of The Palms.
It is about 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 confirmed 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 believes that the decision of the Prosecutor’s Office to support his complaint for the delay in the rescue opens “a path towards reparation and justice” for the families of those who died in that shipwreck.
Caminando Fronteras is already communicating this decision to the families of the victims with whom it is in contact, including the parents of the four-year-old boy who drowned in the shipwreck, whose body was one of the only two recovered and has been found since then. at the Institute of Legal Medicine of Las Palmas.
“They recognize them as people. Reporting this case means recognizing that people died there and that it is necessary to open an investigation. They humanize the victims again,” its founder and spokesperson, Helena Maleno, told EFE.
The Spanish activist is aware that an investigation is now being opened that can be “complicated, long and tedious”, but that must be faced so that the families “know the truth of what happened” and who were “responsible”.
