The big question hovering after the report was leaked is whether the Spanish police should have informed the Interior Minister about it. It depends on whether it was acting as Judicial Police. The law stipulates that the function of the Judicial Police "includes assistance" to the courts in "the discovery of crimes" and establishes that, in such cases, it "shall act under the direction" of the courts and the Public Prosecutor's Office. Therefore, it is detached from the usual organic hierarchy. The legislation provides that they "may not be removed or set aside" until they have finished their mission.The criminal case regarding Ceuta is not formally open because the judge has not yet declared herself competent to investigate the facts, but Iustitia Europa, the extra-parliamentary party that filed the original complaint, maintains that the members of the Cenif did indeed "carry out functions" of the Judicial Police. In a document sent to María Tardón, it alleges that the diligence they have carried out and the information they have obtained "remain subject to the functional direction" of the National Court and, therefore, to the "guarantees established" for the Judicial Police, which does not have to report to its superiors.In fact, María Tardón directly ordered the investigators not to provide any information to their superiors regarding the preparation and content of the report. For this reason, the Director General of the Spanish police had no prior knowledge of it until it appeared in the media.
The police report points out that the Moroccan security forces "actively guided" the migrants to Ceuta
ARA has had access to the document, which points to a "prior planning" and a will to "collapse the system" of border management
MadridThe National Centre for Immigration and Borders (Cenif) has concluded that the entry of 80,000 migrants into Ceuta at the end of July relied on the complicity of Moroccan security forces. This is according to the report submitted to the National Court, to which ARA has had access. It alleges that it was a process that had “prior planning” and “objectives other than migratory ones” and that it was “facilitated” by an “active guidance of the mass towards crossing points” by the Moroccan Forces and Security Corps, added to a “scant presence” of agents. It is a version that clashes head-on with the explanations given so far by the PSOE ministries and Pedro Sánchez, who have at all times dissociated the Alawite country from the crisis andhave highlighted its “cooperation”.
“The massive entry does not respond to a spontaneous phenomenon of irregular immigration, but is the consequence or purpose of a planned process that is designed in advance,” states the 51-page report. One of the characteristics was to generate a “diffuse intellectual and directive authorship” so that it would be difficult to identify. Despite this, through the information available, the Spanish police have been able to “determine the existence of a structure of at least five levels” as responsible for a “process planned, monitored and executed in phases.” In three of them, it is possible to “point out specific and individualized persons.”
Two types of “active subjects”
Level three are the “organizers of the flow of people on the ground”. And it is here that the document points directly to the Moroccan security forces, through two types of “active subjects”. On one hand, the uniformed personnel who gave “indications” to the people crossing the border to “overcome obstacles”. On the other hand, the non-uniformed “dynamic agents”: a series of people with behavior that “does not fit” with the dynamics of the crowd. They were men between 30 and 50 years old with a “strong or athletic build” and short hair who wore “neutral-colored, inconspicuous t-shirts” and closed sports shoes and carried “backpacks, fanny packs, or small handbags”.
Why did they attract attention? They were “attentive” to their surroundings and showed “attitudes of control, leadership, and direction”, in contrast to the people surrounding them: “They walk in the opposite direction to the flow of people, moving away from the paths while observing the passage of the groups, urging the crowd to continue the march or maintaining conversations constantly on their mobile phones, as if they were monitoring the event”. In some cases, they even “gave instructions” to the uniformed personnel.
The Ministry of the Interior continues to exonerate Morocco
The Spanish government has been on the ropes since El Español revealed that the main conclusions of the report pointed to Morocco. At dawn, the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, sent a letter to the Director General of the Spanish Police, Francisco Pardo, asking him for explanations regarding the “veracity” of the document, arguing that it is “essential” for the Spanish government to be able to “adopt the appropriate decisions.” “This is information that must be made immediately available to the members of the National Security Council,” he reproached him in the missive.
Hours later, sources from the ministry explained that Francisco Pardo had communicated to him that there is no police report that “attributes” the “planning or execution” of the events to the Moroccan Security Forces. It is a version that the full text of the report contradicts completely. At the last minute, the same voices refer to the version of the Deputy Operational Director, that the report “does not allow establishing the involvement of any government, service, agency, or person, with the intellectual authorship of the massive entry remaining unknown.” The report acknowledges that “it has not been possible to individualize” who has the highest level of responsibility, but argues that “the intellectual and material author” must have a “very high technical and planning level,” a “shared objective,” and a “single organizational reference.”
In parallel, Interior sources are trying to downplay the importance and validity of the Cenif. They allege that it “does not have the status of an investigative unit” of the Judicial Police, that it “does not have personnel deployed” in Morocco, and that it is “unusual” for it to act under the mandate of a court. Regarding the report, they argue that it is based on “data obtained from monitoring the activity of messaging applications and open-character social networks and images and videos disseminated by different media outlets.”
For his part, Fernando López Aguilar, current PSOE MEP and Minister of Justice under José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, maintained in an interview with Euronews that the massive entry of migrants “could not have happened” without the Moroccan authorities “having looked the other way a little.”
“It does not respond to a migratory intention”
To support its thesis, the Cenif report justifies that the dynamics of migrant entry and the “almost immediate return” of the majority of those who entered allow for the “unequivocal” conclusion that the true purpose of the migrants “does not respond to a migratory intention.” The first wave of people was led by young men with a high percentage of minors who had to “face a greater difficulty” in entering and aimed to “saturate the containment means to force the opening of access points.” The second wave consisted of “family units with a high presence of women and young children” to “deepen the saturation” of border control and “eliminate the physical response capacity” of the security forces, given that it “deactivated” the possibility of using force.
90% of the migrants who entered Ceuta left shortly after: "Their intention is not to stay there or try to obtain a transfer to the Peninsula," the report relates. They were moved by "the opportunity to participate in what is perceived as a historic occasion" or by "simple curiosity caused by the contagion effect." "It is observed that they act with relative calm, conveying a certain sense of impunity. This perception is probably reinforced by the attitude of almost active tolerance of the Moroccan security forces," the document reiterates. "It is not understood in any other way that this mobilization extends to social groups – such as family nuclei or young children – that would not participate in such a generalized way if it involved any danger," it adds. The remaining 10% were people who had a "prior or acquired will" to remain in Spain and "took advantage of an organized and massive movement" to try to obtain an opportunity to move to the Peninsula.
The document also states that the "behavior and evolution" of the entry into Ceuta is "incompatible" with the actions of a "group of spontaneous origin without internal organization" because, unlike what happens at large concerts or sporting events, there were no "blockages on access roads" or in means of transport and there were no "public order incidents." Likewise, it argues that they have detected a "high level of specialization of tasks or functions" that "is beyond the reach of any criminal structure" of those operating in the area.
A prior alert sent to border posts
Beyond this report prepared at the request of the National Court, the Cenif –the police unit that has now jumped to the forefront– also sent a notice on July 29 to the border posts of Ceuta and Melilla. This document, which ARA has had access to, explained that there was evidence of a “potential risk of irregular entries” and pointed to the “possible consequences derived” from the Supreme Court ruling on hot returns. And it added that there was an “extreme risk” that entries would occur by swimming and jumping the fence in a coordinated manner. In the previous days, it had been monitoring different groups and forums that participated in the viralization of the actions: the previous week there had been 180 messages, which rose to 1,300 just the day before and to almost 2,000 on the first day of the mass entry.
However, despite these warnings, the director general of the Spanish police explained that the communication was a “frequent risk alert” and that it “did not include any allusion” to a “possible mass entry.” That is to say, the Spanish government maintains that it did not have prior warnings to anticipate the crisis. For the moment, only the head of Defense and person in charge of the CNI, Margarita Robles, has admitted that there was indeed information about an increase in people crossing the border by swimming.