The Prosecutor's Office endorses that the National Court investigates the massive entry of migrants into Ceuta

MadridThe Public Prosecutor's Office is in favor of the National Court formally opening a criminal case regarding the mass entry of migrants into Ceuta at the end of July. This is expressed in the report submitted by prosecutor Jesús Alonso, who concludes that the judge is competent to investigate the events. After having received the pronouncement from the Public Ministry and the reports from the Spanish police and the Civil Guard that it requested at the beginning of August, now magistrate María Tardón will have to make a decision. The Public Prosecutor's Office argues that the “main result” of the entry of migrants affected Ceuta and justifies that the law of the judiciary allows the Spanish jurisdiction to scrutinize “conduct carried out outside the national territory” when there are “sufficient connecting elements” and when the “legally relevant effects” are projected onto interests protected by the Spanish legal system.

The prosecutor argues that the first indications of the investigation point to a “substantial part” of the “planning, mobilization, logistical coordination, digital dissemination and eventual strategic direction” of the mass entry “having been developed in Moroccan territory”, while “the material execution of the action, the intended result and the most relevant effects” were in Spanish territory. Furthermore, it asks the judge to decree the partial secrecy of the proceedings given the “exceptional reasons” of the case.

At this moment, the Public Prosecutor's Office considers that the investigated facts would be constitutive of the crimes of criminal organization or group and of facilitating illegal immigration, aggravated by having endangered the life or physical integrity of people and in concurrence with crimes of homicide and injuries due to gross negligence. Later on, the instruction will have to determine whether the facts could have involved crimes that affected public order or legal assets of a collective nature such as the peace or independence of the State.

The Prosecutor's Office's statement comes two days after the report from the National Immigration and Borders Center (Cenif) emerged which concludes that the migrants had the complicity of the Moroccan security forces, who "facilitated" the entry with an "active guidance of the crowd towards crossing points" and showed "total permissiveness" towards the people crossing the border, without making "any serious attempt" to try to "disperse or turn them away".

The judicial fronts of the Ceuta crisis

The National Court case arose from a complaint filed by the ultra entity Iustitia Europa for an “instrumentalization of migratory flows that compromises territorial integrity and public safety”. Subsequently, Vox and Hazte Oír also brought the crisis to the National Court and the judge decided to group everything under the same umbrella. The PP and the government of Ceuta have announced that they will appear as a popular prosecution. In the last few hours, the association Liberum –another regular in the cases that splash the PSOE– has presented a new complaint.

In parallel, Manos Limpias filed a complaint with the Supreme Court against Pedro Sánchez and the Ministers of the Interior and Defense, Fernando Grande-Marlaska and Margarita Robles. For the moment, the high court has not yet made a move. Where there have been developments is in the courts of Ceuta, which have initiated preliminary proceedings due to a complaint by the ultra pseudo-union against the delegate of the Spanish government in the autonomous city, Miguel Ángel Pérez Triano, for the crimes of omission of the duty to prosecute crimes and malfeasance by omission. Vox and Hazte Oír have also launched actions against him.