The Ceuta prosecutor’s office believes that the recently dismissed city government delegate, Salvadora Mateos, and the current vice president of the regional executive, Mabel Deu (PP), should be suspended from politics for 12 years in either elected or appointed positions and will lose the “respect associated” with the alleged exercise of these responsibilities. In relation to the crime attributed to them in August 2021 when they returned to Morocco, 55 unaccompanied migrant children outside the provisions of Spanish law.
In its indictment requesting the opening of an oral trial against both, the contents of which elDiario.es has access to, the Public Ministry understands that it is appropriate to sentence Mateos and Deu to a 12-year special disqualification for the “optional” exercise. positions” or “government functions” at the state, regional or local level, as well as “loss of dignity related to the status of state delegate and autonomous city vice president”, as well as the exercise of the right. At the same time, the right to passive vote.
The prosecution sees confirmed that after the migration crisis of May 2021, when “there is a massive and irregular entry into Ceuta of about 15,000 immigrants, of whom about 1,200 declared that they were minors and as such,” the Vice President of Ceuta. It took “various actions” to speed up the repatriation of Moroccan children via the “de facto route”.
“He held a number of meetings and contacts with the government delegate, and they mutually decided to carry out the return without the established procedure and, therefore, without verifying the compliance with the legal prerequisites,” the prosecutor’s office said. which believes they sought protection under a 2007 agreement between Spain and Morocco, which was never implemented, to “avoid the administrative and criminal liability they knew full well they would face.”
On August 10, they managed to send a letter to the Secretary of State for Security Affairs of the Ministry of Internal Affairs “which was not signed by any authority or official”, in which they “begged” for the “return of minors”. of the Kingdom of Morocco, which respects their interests and rights at all times,” a letter that Deu interprets as a “mandate” that absolves him of responsibility, according to a complaint he filed against his prosecution in a provincial court, in court. to judge them.
The head of the Ceuta Juvenile Zone, Tony Palomo, then wrote to his counsel to warn that it was “clear” that he had to comply with the provisions of the immigration law on the repatriation of minors, which provides for a series of actions that were not followed. . Despite this, the former delegate scheduled a meeting the next day with Moroccan officials at the Tarajal border, where the same official verbally warned that the deportation of minors “without any due process” was “against the national and international legal system.”
“Know about their illegal production”
According to the prosecutor’s office, “both were fully aware of their unlawful conduct,” since the 2007 agreement itself requires “strict compliance” with both Spanish and international law and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. “They agreed on the practice of repatriation [en principio de 145 niños] Without determining whether any minor was in a vulnerable situation in their country of origin or whether the minor’s interest could be harmed,” he scolded.
Dew also does not discuss the objections of the persons responsible for the SAMU Foundation in the emergency accommodation, from which it was decided to withdraw the youths in groups of 15 per day, “without preserving their possible vulnerability, as well as themselves” in this way in the interests of minors” and for four days, from August 13 to 16, until The Court of Justice gave him a preliminary suspension order, he managed to return a total of 55 minors to the country. At least half a dozen of them managed to return to Spain in the last 16 months.
The contentious-administrative jurisdiction sanctioned both the first and second instances, pending the conclusion of the Supreme Court that the substantive action of the respondents, “exempts from the minimum necessary procedural guarantees”, preventing “an objective situation of risk to the physical or moral integrity of minors” and that, contrary to what The defense argues that “the sudden, massive and illegal nature of the entry into Ceuta last spring of thousands of citizens of the Kingdom of Morocco allowed the Kingdom of Spain to justify obedience to the rule of law”.
Mateos was fired without warning by the Council of Ministers on October 31, days before his 73rd birthday, after the state attorney used the medical treatment he was receiving to try to retract his last statement before an investigating judge, in which he said. that the whole process was agreed with Madrid, although its details were finalized in Ceuta.
Deu (Barcelona, ​​1966), Juan Vivas’ “right-hand man” in the Ceuta government for twenty years, continues to serve as vice-president of the city, although he resigned in the summer after learning that he was a minor. accounting for it. The regional PP’s Committee of Rights and Guarantees has announced that he will decide his future in the party once he faces criminal charges following a complaint filed by the association L’Escola, but he has already said he will refuse to run for re-election. in May 2023.
Her professional future as a teacher remains on hold, depending on whether the provincial court accepts the request of the popular accuser, the Spanish immigration network, which calls for a 15-year special disqualification from work or position for both her and Mateos. “Knowing the opposition at least from the Ministry of Social Rights and the tendency of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, they do not even declare that. The Department of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration was consulted and benefited from the accessibility that the Moroccan authorities have shown in particular.”
Source: El Diario
