Tragedy in Murcia: Family Struggles to Repatriate Drowned Toddler’s Body from Spain

Wadie is the fifth child of a family of six children. Their parents, Moroccan Zakia and her Algerian husband Fayçal, decided to take them on vacation to their maternal grandparents in the Murcia region. The family decided to go swimming at the beach of Los Narejos. While the children were enjoying the water, the couple went to the supermarket to buy them refreshments and snacks. That’s when the tragedy happened. "I was in the water and I was bathing with two of my grandchildren. Wadie was small and didn’t know how to swim. I left him on the beach," says Yacout, the victim’s grandmother, to El Espanol.

According to a source from the local police in Los Alcazares, little Wadie would have moved away from the bathing area in a few seconds. His body was found a few minutes later by a young man who saw him floating, face in the water, about fifty meters from where the family was. A woman doctor at the Morales Meseguer hospital in Murcia, who was present on the spot, was trying to revive him when the parents returned from the supermarket and came across the scene. "He loved to play with water and I wanted to teach him to swim," says the 39-year-old mother, completely devastated and plagued by guilt. "We only left the beach for half an hour," laments the father, Fayçal.

Yacout, Wadie’s grandmother, is also devastated by the loss of the little boy. This 60-year-old Moroccan woman explains the family’s difficult living conditions and asks for help to bury the child with dignity. "We are a poor family. We need 2,500 euros to repatriate Wadie," she says. "We have no money and no insurance to bury my grandson," complains El Jilali, 66, the little boy’s grandfather.

The Muslim community in Murcia has mobilized to raise funds. "My daughter Zakia wants to bury my grandson in Nador, but her residence permit has expired in France and if she goes to Morocco, she won’t be able to leave the country," explains Yacout. Despite all the efforts of the family, assisted by Sabah Yacoubi, the president of the Association of Moroccan Migrant Workers in Murcia, to regularize Zakia’s situation, nothing worked.

Faced with this situation, the parents of the little boy, who holds a French passport, have decided to bury him in Paris. But here again, the migrant status of the mother poses a problem. "We are trying to manage the repatriation with the French consulate so that the little one can be buried in Paris," assures Sabah Yacoubi. The parents Zakia and Fayçal, for their part, are only asking for a little solidarity from the administration. "We are trying to reach the French ambassador in Spain to help us bury our son in Paris," they wish.