Spanish Inquiry Into Drowning of Migrants

Spain's national ombudsman yesterday opened an investigation into why 36 illegal African immigrants drowned within reach of a big US-Spanish naval base.

Spanish authorities took almost an hour to answer a call for help and launch a rescue boat when a speedboat with more than 40 immigrants ran into trouble in rough seas about three miles off Cadiz, up the Atlantic coast.

"There seems to be a convergence of opinion that there was a lack of coordination and of materials," the ombudsman, Enrique Mugica, said after days of press revelations about the October 25 tragedy.

The warning was sounded late that day by the captain of a merchant ship in the Bay of Cadiz who tried to help but saw the rubberised speedboat disappear towards the base eight miles away at Rota.

"Couldn't someone have come from the base at Rota? They have plenty of launches, landing ships and trained personnel," the captain of the cargo ship, Rogelio Navarrete, asked in an interview with the newspaper El Pais yesterday.

Rescue services in Cadiz did not take to sea for 52 minutes because they could not find any police officers to accompany them on a Saturday afternoon, though police unions claimed yesterday that several volunteers were turned away.

By the time the rescue vessel set sail it was dark and the boat carrying the immigrants had been lost in waves of four to six metres. It travelled across the bay in front of the joint naval and airbase used by the US Sixth Fleet and the Spanish navy and, within two hours, had capsized and been washed up on a beach a couple of miles further on.

Only six of the immigrants are known to have made it to shore. Over the following days 36 corpses were washed up on beaches in the Rota base and around the Bay of Cadiz, with Spanish newspapers and television stations running pictures of their partially decomposed bodies.

Spanish authorities were yesterday unable to tell the Guardian whether the naval base had been asked for help or knew about the presence of the immigrant boat.

"The Spanish have the lead on recovery and rescue," said a spokesman for the American contingent at the base. "We would have assisted if we had been asked."

Spain has set up a sophisticated early warning system to detect immigrant-trafficking boats crossing the Strait of Gibraltar from Morocco.

But the system of remote-controlled radar and night-vision cameras has meant traffickers now take longer, more roundabout and more dangerous routes to cross from north Africa.

One of those routes means heading into the Atlantic to get to the area around Rota.

Some 1,000 people are estimated to have died on this route or trying to get to the Canary Islands from Morocco over the past 15 years.