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Morocco, Spain police investigate death in Melilla

Body of 17-year-old Cameroonian found near border fence after clashes

El Pais Spain | T. BÁRBULO / A. E.

Madrid

Spain and Morocco's security forces are investigating the death of a Cameroonian boy whose body was found a short distance from the border fence where a group of 300 would-be immigrants battled police on Sunday night in an attempt to force their way into Melilla.

The body of the youth, identified as 17-year-old Joe Ypo, was found shortly after 7pm on Monday on the Moroccan side of the border. In the same area 17 hours earlier the group of mostly sub-Saharan migrants had used makeshift ladders in an attempt to scale the barbed-wire fence that rings the Spanish North African enclave. They were fought back by 80 Spanish Civil Guard officers armed with riot gear as well as Moroccan border guards, resulting in injuries to 10 officers and three immigrants. Eighty-seven of the assailants were arrested by Moroccan police.

The Spanish government delegate in Melilla, José Fernández Chacón, said yesterday that there is a great deal of "conjecture" surrounding how the Cameroonian youth died, and why neither Spanish nor Moroccan officers found the body until late on Monday afternoon.

He indicated, however, that the youth probably died on Monday, and that his body, laid out on one of the makeshift ladders, was brought to the border area by a group of around 30 sub-Saharan Africans, several of whom were subsequently interviewed by Moroccan police. "We're investigating the case and at the moment we don't know where or how he died," Fernández Chácon said.

Several of the immigrants involved in the fence-storming on Sunday argued, however, that the youth had been beaten on the Spanish side of the border, and that Civil Guard officers had placed his body on the Moroccan side of the fence.

"He was beaten until he could no longer move and then his body was deported to Morocco," SOS Racismo, a charity that helps immigrants, said in a statement after interviewing some of the sub-Saharan Africans involved in Sunday's clashes.

http://www.elpais.es
© 2005 El Pais

 

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