The last shelve to the case Tarajal has resonated with a rare power and has emerged as yet another obstacle for NGOS personadas as a popular accusation for the death —in February 2014— 15 immigrants who were trying to get across to the coast of Ceuta, while the Civil Guard used riot gear to stop this. The collective, after five years of training, achieved in September that the magistrate María Lozano the prosecution of 16 agents after appreciating evidence of homicide, reckless and a denial of relief. But barely tasted his victory a month. This Tuesday, the same judge archivaba to apply the doctrine Loot: as the Prosecutor’s office and the State attorney do not blame them —and there is no particular charge— you cannot move forward.
This resolution has caused “disappointment and anger”, in the mouth of Estrella Galán, director general of the Spanish Commission for Refugee Aid (CEAR), which already announced it will appeal the dismissal. Also what will the NGO Coordinator of Neighborhoods, which during the statement tried that several family members of the victims may intervene in private prosecution. The first judge instructor who took the case rejected at the end of 2014.
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The Governments of PP and PSOE hid returns hot since 1999, The judge applied the ‘doctrine Loot’ to archive the case against the civil guards processed by Tarajal
As stated in the summary, the instructor dismissed it then because the family had not been credited properly for your condition of harmed not to make the original documents, which checked your link, and when not doing so, later on, translated. A decision also supported the Provincial court. Yes, Patricia Fernández, lawyer, Coordinator of Neighborhoods, ensures that presented all the papers after that setback, but that never received a response from the court. In addition, apostille, this October they returned to ask for the show of the relatives after processing to avoid that you could apply the doctrine Spoils, but the judge Lozano rejected it on the grounds that the matter had already been settled in your day.
Even so, NGOS reject this doctrine may be applied in the case Tarajal and insist that the criterion of the judge opens the door to the “impunity”. “The popular indictment is an institution of the constitution, that fulfils its most important function right in cases like this: when you are investigating possible abuses or excesses of public authorities. With the simple eventuality that the State may not be pursuing with rigor to other agents of the State, a prosecution brought by ordinary citizens is not subject to the authority of no one serves to mitigate potential conflicts of interests”, underlined Jacobo Dopico, a professor of Criminal Law at the Carlos III University.
“After five years of procedural roadblocks we face a new attempt to obstruct justice in the southern border,” says the Observatory Desc, other groups personados, in reference to the stones that, according to NGOS, have been found in the road in February 2014 to undertake this legal battle. Among others, for example, the continuous negative of Morocco to cooperate with the investigation.
In fact, after repeatedly requesting the judge to the neighboring country autopsies of the corpses recovered in its territory and it does not get an answer, the judge of the link in that country arrived to send in mid-2017 a statement admitting that the authorities of Morocco, “when it comes to letters rogatory from Courts of Ceuta or Melilla, they don’t answer or they invoke reasons of national sovereignty in order to not support them”.
visa
A reply came just a few months after that, in 2016, the NGO Walk Borders also alleging that the PP Government had refused the visa to the relatives of the victims that they were going to travel to Spain to collaborate with attorneys, among other matters, on the recognition of the bodies that were still unidentified. These relatives were, in addition, the attacks of the officers, who are accused in their statements of defence to the NGOS of presenting “medical documents partial, biased and even fabricated by the alleged victims, whose sole purpose is to or defamation of the guardia civil, through the slander or the obtaining of economic benefits to the family members of the deceased that have appeared in the proceedings”.
“They were not criminals, they just wanted to cross”
The testimony of Liliana A., a survivor of Tarajal, resounded thousands of miles away from the coast where his companions left the life. On the 25th of march, following the attempts of NGOS to be heard in the statement, finally testified before the judge. He did so by video link from Germany. And, during his intervention, he offered a version of what happened is very different of the 16 civil guards who were charged in the case. The woman not only claimed that the agents had fired at them, but saw it as “a lot of people” out wound in the water. In addition, attributed to the armed institute the responsibility for the chaos: “When you shoot, you block it. You paralizas. You can’t move and that is the cause of many deaths. You sink,” said this cameroon: “These people were not criminals. Just sought to cross. Nothing more,” he added, according to consists in the recording of his statement, incorporated into the summary. A testimony that, as he admitted to the judge, strengthens the evidence against the guards.
