Amnesty International denounces Spanish ill-treatment of Moroccan children
Amnesty International (AI) accused in its 2002 report released Tuesday, the Spanish authorities of ill-treatment and abusive expulsion of Moroccan minors from the occupied cities of Sebta and Melillia.
AI-Spain says there is continued concern that the Spanish authorities in Sebta and Melilla (two Moroccan northern cities still occupied by Spain) are renewing, or seeking to renew, the practice of expelling Moroccan children to Morocco.
"There was a series of expulsions of unaccompanied children who had residence permits, had been living in Melilla for several years and were attending school," the NGO said.
AI-Spain director, Esteban Beltran, deplored that none of the expelled children received legal assistance before or at the time of expulsion and none had found families waiting for them at the border.
"In December, a nine-year-old child, Karim Bouitali, was reportedly among other children taken from shelters in Melilla and, without the benefit of legal assistance, escorted to the frontier by armed police officers. He was later seen alone, clinging to the border fence, weeping, numbed with cold and drenched with rain," Beltran said.
Insufficient means are no justification of ill-treatment and violations of children's rights, said Beltran, who reported 330 cases of torture in Spain in 2001.
The victims of moral or physical torture are generally vulnerable persons such as women, children and foreigners, he added.
AI-Spain director called for the set up of camera-equipped cells in police stations to protect confined immigrants against potential ill-treatment.
Amnesty International's 2002 report calls Spain to respect the convention on children's rights and revise the cases of every minor before expelling them.
Amnesty also cites the case of legal migrants who were victims of abusive arrest or detention by plainclothes police agents, such as Abdelhak Archani, a Badalona-settled Moroccan who was beaten by Spanish policemen last July.
