{"id":417474,"date":"2025-09-12T03:50:14","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T03:50:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/417474\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T03:50:14","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T03:50:14","slug":"spain-court-convicts-ex-officials-in-ceuta-for-illegal-minors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/417474\/","title":{"rendered":"Spain Court Convicts Ex-Officials in Ceuta for Illegal Minors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0Rabat \u2014 A Spanish court based in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta sentenced former officials to be disqualified for nine years from public office for illegally repatriating 55 Moroccan minors in 2021.<\/p>\n<p>The sentences concerned the former government delegate in Ceuta, Salvadora Mateos, and the former first Vice President of the enclave, Mabel Deu.<\/p>\n<p>This means that the two former officials will be barred from holding public office for nine years, El Pa\u00eds <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/elpais.com\/espana\/2025-09-11\/condenadas-la-exdelegada-del-gobierno-y-la-vicepresidenta-de-ceuta-por-la-devolucion-menores-marroquies-en-2021.html\" rel=\"noopener\">reported<\/a>. This includes all elected positions, whether at the national, regional, or local level.<\/p>\n<p>The two former executives will also be banned from exercising any government duties.<\/p>\n<p>The Spanish news outlet said the case dates back to May 2021, when at least 15,0000 people crossed the border of the enclave amid a previous diplomatic crisis between Morocco and Spain.<\/p>\n<p>The former executives have ordered the repatriation of the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.moroccoworldnews.com\/2025\/08\/255664\/200-migrants-attempt-swimming-crossing-to-spanish-enclave-of-ceuta\/\" rel=\"noopener\">minors<\/a>, disregarding legal procedure.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Mateos was \u201caware that it did not comply with any legality,\u201d El Pa\u00eds quoted the ruling of the court as saying today.<\/p>\n<p>The decision also ignored provisions of the 2007 agreement between Morocco and Spain on international norms and principles, as well as on the Convention on the Rights of the Child.<\/p>\n<p>The ruling stressed that the decision to repatriate the minors did not take into account whether they were in a vulnerable situation in their country of origin.<\/p>\n<p>Disregarding the legal procedure, the former officials convened in a meeting and decided to proceed with the \u201cimmediate return\u201d of the unaccompanied minors.<\/p>\n<p>Spain and Morocco have been stressing their commitment to continue strengthening a humanitarian approach to tackle irregular migration.<\/p>\n<p>In January, Spain <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.moroccoworldnews.com\/2025\/01\/166141\/spain-allocates-euro-2-5-million-to-morocco-for-migration-control\/\" rel=\"noopener\">allocated<\/a> \u20ac2.5 million to Morocco for border surveillance equipment and vehicles.<\/p>\n<p>The new funding comes as Spain reported unprecedented migration pressures with over 63,970 irregular arrivals in 2024, marking a 12.5% increase from the previous year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0Rabat \u2014 A Spanish court based in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta sentenced former officials to be disqualified&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":417475,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5312],"tags":[143021,2000,299,40,61037,104],"class_list":{"0":"post-417474","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-spain","8":"tag-ceuta","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-immigration","12":"tag-minors","13":"tag-spain"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115189293050216328","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/417475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}