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Expelled migrants 'dumped in the Moroccan desert'
By Isambard Wilkinson in Melilla
(Filed: 08/10/2005) Morocco was yesterday accused of dumping 500 men, women and children in a remote part of its southern desert after they were expelled by Spanish authorities in their north African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. The sub-Saharan migrants were taken by a convoy of trucks to the El Aouina-Souatar area after being handed over to Moroccan officials. There, they were 'abandoned to their fate', according to Medecins sans Frontieres. The medical charity said it had treated more than 50 injured immigrants from the group, some of whom they had taken to hospital. Almost every dawn over the past few weeks, hundreds of young Africans, mostly men, have launched co-ordinated assaults on Ceuta and Melilla in the style of a medieval siege. Throwing up hundreds of home-made ladders against the two-tiered security fence, the migrants have surged over the border. The Spanish Right-wing opposition People's Party has blamed the crisis on the socialist government. It introduced an amnesty permitting 700,000 immigrants to stay in Spain earlier this year. At least 14 Africans have been killed attempting to enter Spanish territory in the past three weeks. Some of those killed were shot by Moroccan police and others trampled in the stampede to clear the fences. Six men died on Thursday during a violent assault by 400 immigrants trying to enter Melilla. Last week five others were shot dead when about 600 Africans tried to storm the fences. Spanish police have logged about 12,000 attempts by migrants to reach Melilla this year. Ceded by the Portuguese in 1580 and claimed by Morocco, the 60,000-strong garrison town of the Spanish foreign legion erected the fence in 1998. Spanish helicopters using thermal imaging can make out the groups of would-be immigrants, at times up to 1,000 strong, surging through woods near Melilla at night carrying makeshift ladders. The assaults are desperate battles as immigrants hurl rocks at the Spanish border guards, who fire rubber bullets and tear gas, and at Moroccan police who fire live rounds, not always into the air. Barbed wire is left clothes-strewn and bloodied Africans who make it across the border run directly to the police station to register for asylum. Spanish law only allows Moroccans, Algerians and Nigerians to be expelled immediately. One who made it across and has been allowed to stay, at least temporarily, is Patrick Nasser, 29, from Cameroon. He wants to be a footballer in Madrid or Barcelona. "Spain is a great welcoming country," he said. "That is why I chose it. There is work for everyone." His luck may run out. The socialist government of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero yesterday expelled 73 immigrants by shipping them to Tangier in northern Morocco as part of what is expected to be a wave of expulsions. Those already deposited in the southern desert bordering Algeria will inevitably once again embark on the long march back to the Spanish border. fpress@telegraph.co.uk
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