Moroccan Migrant Dies in Tragic Attempt to Reach Europe via Melilla Port

At the age of 24, he had been in Melilla for nearly two years and like many young Moroccans living illegally in the autonomous city, his goal was to reach Europe by hiding in a truck. According to his brother, quoted by the online newspaper El Público, Soufiane died on January 15 at the port of Melilla. "We couldn’t believe it, but they told us that my brother was dead, that it happened when he tried to sneak into a boat," his older brother Hamza told the newspaper by phone.

A week after the young man’s death, his brother traveled to Melilla to identify his body. His body was "covered in bruises" from the fall and the accident. "After identifying him, my older brother began the procedure to repatriate his remains. It was very expensive, but my father managed to raise the money to bury him here," Hamza summarizes. The family had to pay around 3,500 euros for the remains to be repatriated to Morocco. On January 28, Sofiane’s family received his body.

The young Moroccan was a hairdresser in Morocco. Raised alongside his two brothers and sister in a working-class neighborhood of Fez, he had decided to leave the city to try his luck in Melilla. "He left for Melilla two years ago" and according to what his brother believed, he worked as a hairdresser and later as a smuggler between the city and Morocco.

In reality, many young people who knew him on the spot told the media that he had been trying to reach Spain for more than two months. "It’s the dream of everyone who is here," confided Souleimane, a 17-year-old who also hopes to reach the other side of the Mediterranean one day.