Torture charges as immigrant drowning case is re-opened

The Senegalese immigrant, Laudling Sonko, died when the Guardia Civil allegedly slashed his float and threw him back into the sea in 2007.Another immigrant interception in the Strait from earlier this monthThe case of the 29 year old Senegales immigrant, Laudling Sonko, who drowned in the waters off Cueta during the night of September 25 2007 when, allegedly, the Guardia Civil slashed his float and threw him back into the water as he was trying to enter Ceuta illegally. The man did not know how to swim and perished in the water. The case is to be reopened after the prosecutor in Ceuta has been contacted by the Attorney General’s Office which in turn has been contacted, last February, by the United Nations Committee against Torture, and which says Spain could be condemned for the incident and which has demanded a full investigation. The UN Torture Committee says that Spain broke international conventions in the actions which led to the immigrant’s death. The denuncia was presented by the Spanish Commission for the Help for Refugees, CEAR, whose lawyer, Alberto Revuelta, said that the resolution considered it shows that the events were a breaking of Article 16 of the Convention against Torture, describing his treatment as ‘cruel, inhuman, and degrading’. An original case was archived and a previous request from the Ceuta Prosecutors’ office to reopen the case was not successful. They could only inform Sonko’s family; a sister lives in Almería. Sonko’s body had been buried in an unmarked grave in the Santa Catalina cemetery in Ceuta.