La Audiencia rechaza imponer medidas cautelares contra Ghali, líder del Polisario, pero reabre una causa por genocidio contra él

The judge of the Audiencia Nacional, Santiago Pedraz, has refused to adopt precautionary measures such as a ban on Polisario Front leader Brahim Ghali, whose entry into Spain to receive health care has opened a crisis with Morocco.

Legal sources have informed EFE that the head of the central court of instruction number 5 of the Audiencia has rejected the precautionary measures requested against Ghali, who has been in a hospital in Logroño since last April, when he entered Spain to receive medical treatment for coronavirus.

In addition to the withdrawal of his passport and the prohibition to leave Spain, the judge has not agreed on surveillance and custody measures against Ghali, and has also declined to request, at the request of the Public Prosecutor's Office, that a forensic doctor examine him, after a report suggested that he might have impaired faculties of understanding, although he opens the door for his defence to request it.

The magistrate's decision has been announced at a time of migratory crisis, with the entry of some 6,000 immigrants illegally into Ceuta in the last few hours.

Despite the tensions that Ghali's presence in Spain unleashed with Morocco, the government considered on Tuesday that the massive arrival of immigrants cannot be blamed solely on the presence of the Polisario Front leader in Spain, since migratory crises "respond to multiple causes and are too complex to establish cause and effect".

On the other hand, as advanced by 'La Razón' and confirmed to EFE by legal sources, the judge has also agreed to reopen the case that began in 2008, following a complaint by the Sahrawi Association for the Defence of Human Rights (ASADEH), for alleged crimes such as genocide, murder, injuries, illegal detention, terrorism, torture and disappearances.

Ghali, 71, is summoned on 1 June to answer another complaint, that of blogger Fadel Mihdi Breica, a Spanish citizen of Sahrawi origin, for alleged crimes of illegal detention, torture and crimes against humanity.

Breica, who was imprisoned in a Polisario prison, denounced the "threats" and torture he suffered in 2019, when he arrived in the Polisario camps in Tindouf (Algeria) and was "subjected to beatings and electric shocks", according to the complaint.