García Ortiz is scheduled to meet with his Moroccan counterpart, Moulay Hassan Daki
MADRID, 2 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The State Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, will travel to Morocco tomorrow for an official visit whose objective is to launch a European Commission project aimed at strengthening the rule of law in the Maghreb country. During his stay, he plans to meet with his counterpart, Moulay Hassan Daki, with whom he will discuss issues such as legal cooperation, according to tax sources consulted by Europa Press.
The same sources point out that the agenda does not specifically address what happened on June 24, when some 2,000 migrants tried to jump the Melilla fence in an event that resulted in at least 23 deaths, according to official figures, or up to 70, according to some NGO. The controversy has been reactivated this week by a BBC investigation that maintains that the Moroccan Police transferred corpses from Spanish territory.
Four days later, the State Attorney General’s Office (FEG) opened an investigation to clarify the facts. The investigations, directed by the prosecutor of the coordinating room for Immigration, Beatriz Sánchez, still continue with some pending proceedings, according to the aforementioned sources. Until now they had focused on collecting material such as images from security cameras.
In addition to legal cooperation, during the bilateral meeting, which will take place on Friday, García Ortiz is expected to speak with Daki about the recovery of assets and the reforms carried out by the Moroccan Prosecutor’s Office in its organization and operation.
The project, which will also be presented on Friday, is an initiative of the European Commission that is part of a broader European program of Sectoral Support for Justice Reform that Morocco announced in 2009.
Endowed with one million euros financed by the European Commission, its general objective is to strengthen the rule of law in the Alaouite kingdom through an independent Judiciary to achieve greater protection of rights and freedoms.
The specific objective is to strengthen the institutional capacities of the Moroccan Public Ministry, for which the Spanish Prosecutor’s Office will make its experience and knowledge available to its Moroccan colleagues, the sources detail.
According to the aforementioned program, the aim is to transmit to Rabat “good European practices in terms of methods and tools for the protection of public order”, in particular with regard to the fight against criminal phenomena, the reduction of preventive detention and the use of alternative measures, judicial cooperation mechanisms, modernization in the management of the different prosecutor’s offices and information systems that allow statistics to be compiled.
The sources indicate that there were several countries that presented themselves to deploy this project but finally it fell to the Spanish Prosecutor’s Office. Although it was approved months ago, its launch has been delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
