Senegalese migrants back home

2006-09-15 08:45

Dakar - Illegal migrants sent home by Spain began arriving back in Senegal on Thursday, marking the resumption of a controversial and often-delayed repatriation programme.

A first group of about 50 migrants, escorted by Spanish police, flew in from the Spanish Canary Islands on a chartered Air Europa flight to the Senegalese coastal city of Saint-Louis, 320km north of the capital, Dakar.

Witnesses said Senegalese gendarmes sealed off the airport, keeping journalists away.

Senegal was home to about half of the thousands of Africans who had come ashore in flimsy boats in the Canaries this year.

The Senegalese government was trying to keep the repatriations as low-key as possible, fearing protests from frustrated migrants angry at being sent home.

'Migrants not handcuffed'

An official in the Saint-Louis airport control tower said: "The plane is on the ground." He said a second flight from the Canaries was expected on Thursday, but could not give a time.

A journalist who was there at the time said the migrants, carrying their belongings in bags, were received by the local governor and police who took down their identity details.

Lamine Gueye Samane of Sud-FM radio said: "When they came down from the plane they were not handcuffed, but led by Senegalese police to the reception hall."

The first plane had earlier left Fuerteventura on the Canary Islands after Spanish foreign minister Miguel Angel Moratinos announced the decision to restart the repatriations.

Moratinos said: "Any immigrant who enters Spain illegally has to go back to his country of origin. The repatriations start today and will continue, we will carry out all the repatriations that are necessary."

Socialist government 'desperate'

Two planes carrying about 100 migrants had been scheduled to arrive in Saint-Louis late on Wednesday, but the operation was called off after Senegal told Spain that the airport in the town was not ready.

Spain's Socialist government was desperate to start repatriating African migrants who had been streaming into the Canaries this year, trying to make it to Europe to find work.

Delays would be a serious embarrassment. Immigration tops polls of Spaniards' concerns.

Spanish officials said they understood repatriation was a sensitive subject for the Senegalese government, but justice minister Juan Fernando Lopez Aguilar added that accepting back illegal migrants was a condition for aid programmes.

Dakar suspended repatriation flights in May after returnees said they had been mistreated during the flight, something Spanish police denied. Lopez Aguilar said that repatriated migrants had to be escorted by police.

He said: "There's a procedure to guarantee security on the planes. We can't have mutinies on board if the people being repatriated discover that the destination isn't Madrid, Barcelona or Seville."

- Reuters