The Ministry of the Interior tried, on Sunday night, to send back to Morocco several Sahrawi asylum seekers detained for weeks in unacceptable rooms at Madrid airport, as confirmed to elDiario.es both lawyers who will help them. Police had to suspend the return of most of them due to the resistance they encountered upon returning to the country they were fleeing. Only four of them did not return to Barajas, so their defense understands that they were sent to Marrakech.
After spending weeks locked in the asylum rooms of Barajas, several Sahrawis received notification this Sunday of their planned return for an Air Europa flight this Sunday at 11:50 p.m., after the refusal of their request for international protection. In these cases, it is the airline of the flight by which the returnees arrived in Spain which is responsible for their return to the airport of departure, when their entry into the country is refused. The Interior refuses to give details of the return operation for “security” reasons, but defends that each case “was evaluated individually before adopting a final resolution”.
Among the people that the Interior tried to send back to Morocco is Rachida Amador, a 32-year-old woman, who assures that her freedom is in danger in Morocco. “She tells us that they took her and other people to the tarmac, but they refused to get on the plane,” her lawyer, María Vieyra, told elDiario.es. “They tell us that they were guarded by anti-riot agents who tried to take them to the plane,” adds Fatma El Galia, another lawyer who helps several Sahrawis who arrived in Barajas in recent weeks . “As they were trying to get them on the plane, a spokesperson for the Sahrawi group told the police in English that they did not want to leave and that they would not be responsible for what might happen in the plane, that they were going to continue to “resist…”, he underlines.
They also tried to get Errabab, her husband and their 17-month-old daughter onto the plane, but they resisted and managed to avoid being sent back. The Sahrawi woman has been detained with her baby in one of the airport’s asylum rooms since September 9. In another of them, located in another terminal, is her husband. This is not the first time that the National Police have tried to return this family. Last Friday, they also tried to put them on a plane, according to their family. They also resisted and managed to prevent his return.
During these weeks at the airport, the woman had to be urgently transferred to a hospital in Madrid on September 12 after experiencing abdominal pain and heavy vaginal bleeding. According to her account, at the health center they confirmed that she was one month pregnant but had undergone an abortion, information that the Interior Ministry denies.
Four possible returnees
Lawyer Fatma El Galia specifies that only four of the people whom the police tried to send back this Sunday did not ultimately return to the asylum rooms, so they assume that they were sent back but know nothing of their fate for the moment. “The families don’t know anything and are very worried. We are waiting to confirm where they are,” says El Galia.
Among these four asylum seekers is Aïssa, a Sahrawi musician who uses his songs to demand the freedom of his people. The young man continued a hunger strike for a week to protest his situation and police had already tried to put him on a plane to Morocco on at least one occasion. According to what the singer told elDiario.es, he was in prison for years for his participation in protests linked to the Gdeim Izik camp. “I never thought Spain would act like this with us. My grandfather worked as a soldier in the Spanish army, when it was a Spanish colony. “I didn’t expect that,” laments the Sahrawi singer. “Please, someone help us.” “I am asking for support to take my voice outside and tell the world through music the suffering of the Sahrawi people,” the asylum seeker told this media last week.
His lawyer is especially worried about his parallel. “The other three people who were repatriated, we think, have already accepted voluntarily because they were exhausted, but not Aïssa. Aïssa said she preferred to die before returning to Morocco, she was very afraid because she had been in prison and the same thing could happen,” says El Galia. The last time she spoke to him on Sunday, she noticed that he was very down. “I barely had the strength to talk on the phone,” he adds.
In recent weeks, dozens of Saharawi citizens have requested asylum in Barajas during their stopover in Madrid, generally on flights departing from Marrakech and having as their final origin Cuba, a country which does not require a visa. During their visit to Spain, these citizens requested protection from the Spanish authorities. Although they travel with a Moroccan passport, the majority, in addition to asylum, have also requested statelessness, that is to say recognition of their lack of nationality, given that they claim their Sahrawi identity, from a territory which is still awaiting the referendum. place of self-determination agreed by the UN. Many come from occupied Western Sahara, a territory controlled by Morocco and where Sahrawis who claim their right to self-determination are often victims of repression by Moroccan authorities.
