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EU/Africa: Chilling details of refoulements from Morocco revealed (1)

01 June 2007

A legal opinion prepared by Alberto J. Revuelta Lucerga, member of the Bar Association of Huelva (southwestern Andalusia) and of the International Criminal Bar of the Hague (Netherlands), on behalf of the non-profit association René Cassin Committee (CRC), and in association with the Comité Español de Ayuda al Refugiado (CEAR, Spanish Committee for Assistance to Refugees), provides an in-depth analysis of events and the legal implications of large-scale operations involving the "Detention, deportation and degrading treatment of 42 black persons of sub-Saharan origin, asylum-seekers and refugees, in Morocco in the early morning hours of 23rd to 24th December 2006".

On 23 December 2006, round-ups by the police and auxiliary forces in at least five neighbourhoods in Rabat resulted in the arrest of 248 people (exclusively black skinned) who were taken to Aynnada police station before being transported in minibuses to the Algerian border near Oujda, 600 kilometres away from Rabat. Similar operations resulted in detained foreigners suffering the same fate in Nador (near Melilla, 60 people) and Layoune (170 detained, 59 of whom were taken to the same place). They spent days wandering in the desert at the mercy of the elements and initially, in the border area, Moroccan and Algerian border guards sought to induce them to walk towards the other country by firing their weapons in the air. The announcement of the operation by Moroccan press agency MAP encompassed the operation as part of the:

"framework of the efforts made by the authorities to combat clandestine immigration and people-trafficking networks. This measure also forms part of the framework of cooperation with the European Union and the Spanish authorities"

referring to the tightening of EU immigration policies.

The document uses testimonies from 42 individuals (out of a far larger number) provided during interviews with a humanitarian action team, as the basis of the reconstruction of events, stressing that they suffered deportation, abusive treatment and violation of their rights. The group comprised people from the Democratic Republic of Congo (16), Ivory Coast (21), Congo-Brazzaville (2), one from Angola and two whose nationality was not known,. The group was mainly composed by adult men, with six women, one of them an 11-year-old girl, and three other under 18s among them. Fifteen had already been deported from Morocco on previous occasions. All of them had applied for asylum at the UNHCR offices in Rabat, with case records available in 38 of their cases.

The description of the operations leading to their detentions in Rabat, with gendarmes, uniformed police, civilian police and paramilitaries surrounding neighbourhoods and banging on doors where they knew migrants to be residing, before violently breaking in and detaining the people who were sleeping inside. According to the testimonies, no warrants were shown during the raids, the police destroyed property and stole the detainee's mobile phones, money and personal effects. The destruction and throwing away of UNHCR documents testifying to the fact that they had applied for refugee status, is deemed "even more serious" in the report, which stresses that statements on this point were "unanimous" and that this made protection afforded by UNHCR in Morocco "meaningless".

The sequels of the threats and violence the detainees suffered included fits, attacks, an abortion and several instances of loss of consciousness, with beatings in police stations and during the raids, and a partly paralysed asthma-suffering man's medicines being thrown away. Before being driven to the desert, they were taken to Aynnada police station and loaded onto six vans without any legal assistance or appearance before a court intervening, (ten of the detainees managed to escape at this stage). The vans, carrying around 240 people, left for the border area 25 km away from Oujda (when the first two passed and were filmed by tel