Moroccan Detainee, 21, Found Dead in Las Palmas Prison; Investigation Underway

In a video that has been circulating in Morocco in recent days, a woman lamented the isolation of her son, in pre-trial detention at the Las Palmas prison. Without news of him for some time, she fears he may already be dead.

The video has been widely shared by some Moroccan associations in Spain, followed by comments that seem to confirm the death of the young man in the immigration detention center (CIE) of Las Palmas in Gran Canaria.

The head of the center, Arcadio Díaz Tejera, told EFE that no deaths had been recorded there and that there had been no smoke in the young Moroccan’s cell, as his mother had claimed in the video.

However, the Moroccan consul in the Canary Islands, Ahmed Moussa, confirmed that one of his compatriots, aged 20, died in Gran Canaria, but not in the immigration detention center. The one mentioned by the consul died while in pre-trial detention at the Las Palmas II prison in Juan Grande. The competent court has opened an investigation to determine the exact circumstances of the death.

The dissemination of this news comes a week after the Moroccan government expressed its concern to the Spanish ambassador in Morocco about the mistreatment of some Moroccan migrants in Gran Canaria.