Bildu asks the PSOE for "transparency" to let Congress investigate the Melilla tragedy and not repeat it

He assumes that there is no time to reform this legislature the 'hot returns' that PSOE and UP took from the 'gag law'

MADRID, 5 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) -

Bildu's spokesman in the Congressional Interior Commission, Jon Iñarritu, encouraged the PSOE this Saturday to give free rein to an investigation commission on the tragedy that took place on June 24 at the Melilla fence, which cost the life to more than 30 people, and has asked him to do so "out of political responsibility" and "transparency" to find out "what was done wrong" and thus prevent it from happening again.

In an interview with the 'Parlamento' program on Radio Nacional de España, collected by Europa Press, Iñárritu said that he did not understand the PSOE's refusal to allow Congress to investigate what has been "the greatest tragedy on the Spanish border in recent decades".

The PP does not rule out supporting the commission demanded by United We Can, the usual parliamentary partners of the Government and other formations such as Junts, the BNG and the CUP. Iñárritu believes that the majority party should exercise "responsibility and transparency" by supporting its constitution.

In this context, he stresses that the investigative commissions "should not serve to use them politically or to embarrass the other" but rather to clarify "what happened." "Having the greatest tragedy on the Spanish border in recent decades, something was done wrong, without saying by whom, but we must try to figure out what happened and if there was any responsibility so that it does not happen again," he added.

"It is an exercise of mere political responsibility", he remarked, before pointing out that "it makes no sense" for the PSOE to refuse this investigation when they claimed it in 2014, being in the opposition, after what happened on the beach of El Tarajal (Ceuta), where 15 people drowned trying to reach Spanish soil.

Iñárritu, one of the members of the Interior Commission that will visit the Valla de Melilla this Monday, has blamed the BBC report that questions the version of events offered by the Government for the fact that the Interior has agreed that the deputies can see the videos recorded that day by the border perimeter cameras, although it will depend on the Prosecutor's Office authorizing their viewing since an investigation is open.

"The BBC report has not only had media consequences, but also political ones," commented the Bildu deputy, who has guaranteed that, if he finally has access to these recordings, he will tell what he sees. "It is an obligation that we have contracted with the voters and with society in general, there is a duty of transparency and there is nothing secret in what we are going to see", he has indicated.

Iñárritu has added that the Ombudsman points out that on June 24 there were at least 470 'hot returns' of migrants to Morocco "in which neither Spanish nor international legislation was respected" and he has asked that The articles related to these practices that the PP introduced in the last reform of the Citizen Security Law are reviewed.

At this point, he recalled that the PSOE and United We Can did "a bit of cheating" by agreeing that this matter would be left out of the reform of the 'Gag Law' and be analyzed in a future modification of the Immigration Law that, at Apparently, it will not see the light.

"It would be responsibility, but that reform does not have a planned calendar and it seems that there will not be time. Both the PSOE and United We Can tell us that the entire legislative calendar must be ready on December 31. It seems that on January 1 we have Armageddon", he ironized.

Iñárritu has also referred to the reform of the 'Gag Law', which has been frozen in Congress for months. He has revealed that the government parties and those in favor of its repeal have already held 31 meetings and that it is proving "frankly difficult" to reach an agreement.

"In the Ministry of the Interior it seems that they are not very favorable to a comprehensive reform of the norm, not even in its most harmful articles," he denounced, accusing the Socialists of having gone from requesting the repeal to getting very close to the "definition of citizen security" that the PP has.