A report denounces irregularities in the trials against those accused of driving boats. To obtain testimonies “the threat of non-transfer has been used until someone is identified as the boss”
Newspaper Archive – Refugees in prison and migrants pushed to beg: this is what the trials of boat owners in the Canary Islands are like
Holding a GPS, having been close to the helm or being flagged down by a fellow kayaker is enough to land you in prison. A report on human rights violations in the Canary Islands in 2024 denounces the systematic detention of survivors of the Atlantic route and focuses on the irregularities of the trials against those accused of patera patronage. “I arrived in Tenerife in 2021 after 17 days at sea. I spent two days in the CATE and, on the third, they sent me to prison.” This is how Ivorian Ismael Outtara remembers his first hours in Europe.
He was imprisoned after losing his partner and one of his daughters as a result of the trip. They also separated him from his other daughter. After a year and two months in preventive detention, he was released due to lack of evidence. “I entered prison without knowing the language, without knowing what they were accusing me of. I studied to find out what they were accusing me of, but no one helped me with the procedures,” he recalls during the presentation of the report in Barcelona.
The European regulatory framework requires member states to impose sanctions on anyone who “facilitates the irregular entry or transit” of a person in the community territory. However, as the latest report prepared by the entities Irídia and Novact points out, operations against migrant trafficking in the Canary Islands move away from this goal and end in a persecution against the drivers of the boats, who “very rarely form part of part of an organized clan.”
Despite the danger of the routes and the difficulties that migrants face along the way, in many cases interrogations are carried out as soon as they set foot on land. The Ombudsman has already questioned these practices of the National Police and Frontex (the European border agency), and has warned that the interviews “are carried out while the person has just arrived by sea, in conditions of danger and vulnerability”. Sometimes, there are not even lawyers, even though these testimonies can serve to imprison the alleged drivers of the barges.
“The bulk and origin of the only evidence of the charge (testimony of other members of the boat) is obtained during the 72 hours in which the migrants are detained” in the Temporary Care Centers for Foreigners (CATE). According to the study, there has been pressure for migrants to point out who is directing the boat. “For coercion, the threat of non-transfer has been used until someone is accused as the employer,” the document states.
“During that time, the only evidence the police had against me was a mobile phone that a Frontex agent took from me. They downloaded everything and a report came out of it. What they saw on my cell phone had no criminal signs,” Outtara said during the presentation of the study. Although he regained his freedom, no one will be able to give him back the fourteen months he lost in prison. “That’s a long time in a person’s life. All the planning he had done had fallen through. I didn’t want to stay in Tenerife, but the situation made me stay in the end,” he emphasizes.
Lives cut short
In the Canary Islands, Justice requests higher sentences for the accused than in other autonomous regions. An exhaustive analysis of sentences prepared by the Canarian lawyer Daniel Arencibia and collected by the entities Irídia and Novact concludes that the eight-year sentence is the most repeated among those requested by the Las Palmas Prosecutor’s Office. In Santa Cruz de Tenerife, it falls to seven years. The wait that people go through before they can cancel their criminal records is also longer. While on the islands it takes five years to eliminate them and be able to proceed with their regularization, in the rest of the communities the time is reduced to three years.
Spending up to five years with a criminal record pushes survivors to live “on welfare” once out of prison, unable to work legally. “People leave without a network, nor resources, nor the possibility of being admitted to humanitarian care centers,” the report insists. Human rights violations in the Canary Islands 2024. “People who are released from prison also find themselves in very harsh situations of lack of protection, since they have no money, no resources to travel, or a place to stay,” he adds.
Along these lines, the Arencibia study shows that the two Canary Islands provinces are the only ones in the country in which people of Malian nationality have been accused. Between 2022 and 2023, 22 cases of this type were identified, against the Geneva Convention that protects people in need of international protection from criminal accusations due to their irregular entry into a country, when escaping from territories where their life or safety is in danger. their freedom. This is the case of Mali, which has been going through an armed conflict for more than a decade that has caused the forced displacement of more than 24,000 people.
“The hardest thing was knowing that there were too many people in prison and that the majority signed their consent because they were tired of the situation. Many or most had never seen their lawyer to be able to explain what really happened,” says Ismael. In up to 69% of cases there are conformities. According to the study of rights violations, there are many factors that lead to this point, such as the impossibility of locating witnesses when the trial takes place, sometimes up to ten months after the arrest.
On the Canary Islands route, unlike other border crossings, all the people who board the cayuco or the boat are carrying out their own migratory journey. When employers achieve their own immigration, the law allows for reduced penalties. However, this reduction is only offered when the defendant accepts compliance. Between 2022 and 2024, of 39 people who did not comply with the sentence, 20 were acquitted.
Minors in jail
At least 15 migrant minors accused of being boat owners have passed through the prisons of the Canary Islands. The report, which also addresses the criminalization of migrant children, warns that errors in the identification of survivors have led young people to be in prison. “In order to protect children, the initial requirement is to be able to identify them,” the text insists.
In March of this year, the Provincial Court of Las Palmas ordered the release of a Senegalese minor who spent 82 days in provisional detention accused of promoting irregular immigration. The Justice ordered his release after the young man was subjected to a forensic medical test, the results of which were more compatible with a minority than with “a certainty that the subject is of legal age.”
The teenager, upon arriving at the islands, was identified as a minor by the Red Cross. However, as this newspaper reported, the National Police registered him as an adult. Even though he had a birth certificate that proved his minority, the Investigative Court number 2 of San Bartolomé de Tirajana kept him in prison.
“Identification is the gateway to the rest of the guarantees and rights that are fundamental to be able to meet the principle of the best interests of the minor and guarantee their protection,” the report concludes.
Do not normalize arrests
The admission of migrants to prison is, according to the study, just the tip of the iceberg of immigration policies that normalize the detention of survivors. Irídia and Novact point to the CATE, police resources where people spend a maximum of 72 hours, as an example of the security approach to migration in Europe. “Children and adolescents should not enter there. The name is confusing, but it is a detention center,” stressed researcher Maite Daniela Lo Coco during the presentation of the text in Barcelona.
“Detention spaces are not adequate to receive migrants and refugees after a long and often dangerous journey,” the analysis adds. The withdrawal of cell phones, deficiencies in legal assistance and translation and interpretation services, as well as the precariousness of some of their facilities are some of the main deficits detected in the CATE. In its 2023 report, the Canary Islands Prosecutor’s Office already warned of the “already endemic provisionality” of the Arrecife device, described by the Public Ministry as a shadeless and unpaved lot full of overoccupied tents.
As an alternative, it proposes replicating the experience of welcoming displaced Ukrainians and launching CREADE (Reception, Care and Referral Centers for Ukrainian displaced people). “It would be important to continue with the lessons learned, extending them to all people regardless of their place of origin or origin,” he concludes.
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