The Provincial Court of Palma has ordered the release of the 22 men who were arrested after running away from a plane that made an emergency landing at Palma airport on November 5, 2021. The Air Arabia plane, coming from Casablanca bound for Istanbul, landed due to a supposed medical emergency for one of the passengers.
Part of the passengers then took the opportunity to run away through the runways of the aerodrome with the aim of staying in Europe, which forced the closure of air traffic for several hours.
The first section of the Provincial Court has issued an order on Tuesday in which it decrees their release and agrees to the withdrawal of their passports and the obligation to appear in court every Monday.
The Prosecutor's Office claims five years in prison for each of the 22 involved in the events for a crime of sedition in competition with the crime of aerial sedition contemplated by the Criminal and Procedural Law of Air Navigation of 1964. In the brief of The accusation that he presented in December also raised an alternative request for three years in prison for a crime of coercion in competition with the crime of sedition of the air criminal law.
In a letter now sent to the Provincial Court, the public ministry maintains that the crime of sedition has disappeared from the Penal Code and that, according to the recent pronouncements of the Supreme Court, the facts reported do not fit into the current crime of public disorder, Therefore, the procedure can only continue for the crimes of coercion.
This Tuesday, the Court has transferred the official letter to the Palma prison with the aim of executing the release of the accused.
As soon as they left the Palma jail, the youngsters were arrested by the National Police, who took them to the guard court in the Balearic capital in several vans.
The National Police has asked the judge and the prosecutor to admit the 22 young people to a detention center for foreigners on the Peninsula to comply with the expulsion order that weighed on them.
If they finally enter one of these centers, where they can stay for a maximum of 60 days, the Provincial Court of Palma will have to decide on their final expulsion from the country.
Sources close to the investigation indicate that the repeal of sedition changes the scenario of the matter and lowers the expectations of the prosecution significantly.
If the case goes ahead, the young people will face a request for three years in jail, having served 14 months in pretrial detention.
The Prosecutor's Office accuses the 22 men of following the guidelines published in a Facebook group to devise a plan that would allow them to enter Spanish territory based on a hoax aimed at forcing an emergency landing.
According to the account of the public ministry, when they were flying over Alicante, one of the passengers "pretended to be suffering from a diabetic disease" which forced the plane to land at the Son Sant Joan airport.
The prosecution's account indicates that once the defendants managed to land, seeing that there was no police presence nearby, they tried to delay the resumption of the flight.
“Feigning nervousness and claiming to want to go outside to smoke,
The defendants began a group disturbance in the reduced space available within the aircraft in which they began to yell and push towards the door that was open, despite their obligation to remain seated inside the aircraft”.
Throughout the letter, the accusation speaks of a "chaotic situation" in which those investigated began to "shov and shake" the crew and describe the events that occurred inside the plane as a "riot."
After landing, an ambulance from the airport's emergency service evacuated the passenger to the Son Llàtzer hospital accompanied by another of the travelers "who offered to do translation work."
Once at the health center, says the prosecution,
A total of 81 flights were affected by the closure of the airspace, which was closed between 7:49 p.m. and 10:35 p.m.
12 men were arrested hours later in the vicinity of the airport;
four were arrested 10 days later in the north of the island;
another five between the end of November and December 2021 in different locations in Mallorca, while the last of them was arrested in July in Barcelona.
Three remain unaccounted for.
A similar case occurred on December 7 at the Barcelona airport, when 28 passengers took advantage of an emergency landing, carried out after a woman pretended to be in labor, to escape from the plane that was covering a route between Casablanca (Morocco ) and Istanbul (Turkey) and run around the facilities.
The agents are still looking for 12 people among those who fled.
Both Aena and the Ministry of the Interior are analyzing the possible rulings that allowed, for the second time since November last year, dozens of immigrants to use a critical infrastructure such as an airport to enter Spain illegally.
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