The campaign has already completed two weeks, and with a balance that exceeds 200 arrests and identifications. Moroccan police forces are intercepting the movements of sub-Saharan migrant groups from interior areas of Morocco to Melilla. They are part of the battered contingent that the gendarmes expelled from the surroundings of Mount Gurugú after the tragedy of the border fence, on June 24, deporting them to the south of the country.
In fact, part of the arrests, 54, have taken place last weekend on the slopes of that hill near Melilla whose forests have been a traditional refuge for the Chadian, Malian, Nigerian or Sudanese migrants trying to reach European soil. On that mountain, Morocco has convened escrows of mining companies to reopen the old iron mines of the Rif, which Spain exploited in times of the protectorate.
The police operations began 20 days ago, when the gendarmerie detected the transit back to the north of numerous migrants deported in June. Among them there are not only veterans of the assaults on the fence; also newcomers and an unspecified number of minors. Morocco keeps its contacts in the Spanish Ministry of the Interior informed of the police coups, government sources confirm in Madrid.
To the south
The raids are not only carried out in the Nador area, the city that touches Melilla to the southeast. The furthest arrests have been carried out on the 20th in oujda, 150 kilometers from the Spanish city. That distance, 150 kilometers, is the radius in which the Moroccan gendarmes try to stop the progress of the migrants. The detainees -report Spanish police sources- frequently they are accused before the Moroccan prosecutor’s office of illegal immigration with use of force.
The Moroccan police activity is being used by extreme right-wing activists in Melilla and Ceuta to spread alleged news about the accumulation of thousands of migrants preparing a new assault on the fence. The agitation is so intense that even came to the Interior Commission of the Congress last Wednesday. In the explanation session of the ministry’s budget, Vox blamed the Secretary of State for Security, Rafael Pérezthat Spain donate 30 million euros to Morocco in aid for public security as long as it does not stop illegal immigration.
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At least one of the Moroccan police raids have looked for the root, comment the same sources. In the Oujda raid they searched a house that they suppose is the headquarters of an immigration mafia, seizing hundreds of metal hooks of which sub-Saharans use to scale the border fence.
The Spanish police sources that observe these movements are not aware of confrontations between the migrants and the gendarmes, or scenes of serious resistance to authority. Rabat’s security forces are trying to reach the leadership of a Sudanese criminal organization that, according to the Nador prosecutor’s office, leads bossa 35-year-old Malian settled in Algeria, and who would also be the head of the organization of the massive attempt to cross the border that in June resulted in at least 23 migrants killed by crushing and suffocation.