The situation of the Civil Guard ship Río Tagus on the coast of Mauritania continues to be delicate. Initially and after the failure in the first contacts with the authorities of that country to evacuate the 170 immigrants on board in that territory, after being rescued from a canoe, instructions were received to start the march towards the Canary Islands. But now the order has stopped and, for the moment, the Spanish vessel is anchored in the bay of Nouadhibou, pending new negotiations between Frontex and the Mauritanian authorities.
As EL MUNDO already announced, the members of the Armed Institute had to fire live shots into the air to prevent the riot that the 170 sub-Saharan Africans on board were trying to stage and who were protesting the conditions in which they were going to travel.
The agents used long weapons with shots in the air to discourage immigrants from carrying out any hostile action.
During the afternoon yesterday, as this newspaper has been able to learn, an “agreement” was reached for the migrants to desist from the hunger strike in which they had declared themselves in the morning, and which had caused incidents between them.
Now, the Spanish authorities have decided to reinforce the security of the vessel with 16 armed agents of the maritime service who are stationed in Nouadhibou.
The situation of tension “was enormous” because, as the sources consulted by this newspaper recall, the immigrants housed in the Tagus River are all men.
According to these sources, the ship’s commander has already issued a report with all the details of the rescue for the Mauritanian authorities.
To date, the vessels that participate in surveillance work in the Mediterranean, such as the Tagus River, could only disembark immigrants who had been intercepted within “20 nautical miles” of the Mauritanian territorial sea.
Usually a gendarme and an officer from the Mauritanian navy travel on board these ships to make sure that these agreed distances are respected.
The publication by EL MUNDO of the delicate situation that the crew of the Tagus River is going through, and the intervention with weapons on board, has caused the negotiations with Mauritania to accelerate and from Frontex to try to reach an agreement with the Mauritanian government urgently.
For its part, the professional association Justice for the Civil Guard (JUCIL) considers that the delicate events taking place in the Rio Tajo patrol force the General Directorate of the Civil Guard to make “forceful decisions in the face of episodes of riots experienced on board and in which the integrity of the crew has been put at risk”. JUCIL fears that “the work of the Civil Guard will be changed and that it will become a tourism agency that, at the request of migrants, all young and strong men of military age, will take them to Spanish ports. Or something even more worrying, that turn the Civil Guard patrol boats into rescue ships, where our colleagues are at the mercy of people without affiliation or control”.
In addition, in this case “we question the effectiveness of Frontex’s management, which once again demonstrates its inability to control the border. All that remains is for the colleagues from the Rio Tajo patrol boat to be forced to launch the distress signal used as an emergency call emergency at sea.
