The desperate search for a son who took a dinghy and ended up turned into ashes: "Why did they run to cremate him?"

Abd Al Kareem Bouzefrane, Hakim's father, with a folder with his son's documents and next to the Court of Roquetas de Mar (Almería), on 4 September. /OKBA MOHAMMAD

Since January 3 of last year, nothing has been the same at the Bouzefrane household. This Algerian family saw their son Hakim leave in a dinghy in search of work, but, since he left, his journey and his fate have remained a mystery. The sea swallowed their boat, their mobile phone stopped giving a signal and anguish began to dominate the routine of this humble family, until, almost two weeks after their departure, the waves threw a corpse on a beach in Almeria. The face of the decomposing man was barely recognizable, but a ring, a leather jacket and his slippers gave the first clues: it could be Hakim.

The obsession over her son's whereabouts has kept his parents, a sexagenarian electrician and a housewife, alive. But the exhaustion to get answers and what they have discovered has plunged them into anger and sadness. Interpol, according to the document to which EL PAÍS has had access, has confirmed that the body was that of their son. And a second piece of writing finished breaking them. Adding to the pain of losing their firstborn was something unthinkable for them: the corpse was cremated before it was even identified.

The cremation of their son's body not only violates their faith – cremation is forbidden in Islam – but has left them without the only consolation that the thousands of families who lose their loved ones in distant countries can cling to in their attempt to emigrate: repatriating the body. The Bouzefranes now have only a small bag full of ashes, which they don't even have. They still have a tortuous bureaucratic path to take her home. "I'm still in shock," says the mother from Oran. "Why were they in such a hurry to burn my son?"

Hakim's body was cremated on January 24, 2023, a year after it was found. "It has been a chain of errors, from the court to the funeral home," says lawyer Patricia Fernández Vicens, who has taken on the case. In its writings, the Court of Instruction Number 4 of Roquetas de Mar authorizes, at first, the burial, but in successive documents, it is not clear if by mistake, it ends up including the term "cremation license". The San José de Almería funeral home, where the ashes are still kept, denies any responsibility. "We had the court's authorization to incinerate him," they say, fed up with the case.

Hakim Bouzefrane, in an undated image provided by his family.

The ambiguity of the court documents led to Hakim's body being taken to the crematorium, despite a wealth of evidence that the victim was an immigrant from Algeria, a country where 90% of its inhabitants are Muslim. It was not taken into account that Islam, like Catholicism until the <>s, rejects the cremation of its dead. "It's a decision I wouldn't have made," judicial sources familiar with the case explain.

Hakim was 26 years old and a loving and simple person, his parents said. She helped people, sometimes she gave away her clothes to people who needed them. "If someone asked him for something, he would give it to them without thinking," his mother recalls. The young man had just married, but he was still living in the family home. He worked with his father as an electrician, but decided that in Europe he could aspire to a more prosperous future.

"I'm leaving, pray for me," he told his father before leaving.

"Do you want to talk to your mother?"

"No, because he's going to cry and try to talk me out of going."

The mother hasn't stopped crying ever since. "Our lives changed completely. You can write about our pain however you want because it will all be true. I remember my son every morning, every afternoon. Since he left, we have lost the pleasure of life," the woman laments on the phone. "We've knocked on every door and in the end we've found him, but we don't even have a dead body."

The father, Abd Al Kareem Bouzefrane, travelled to Almeria last month in the hope of taking his son's remains with him and understanding what had happened. He got neither. She managed to see the case file, the black-and-white photos of her son's corpse and belongings. He thinks it's him, but he's not sure. Hakim's case is even more complex than usual. After the autopsy of the body, DNA samples are usually taken that can be sent to the country of origin to be compared with those of his first-degree relatives, but Hakim is adopted, so that cross-referencing will never work. Interpol, however, with the evidence in the file, has taken it for granted that it is him. Bouzefrane Sr., just in case, gave the court a lock of his son's hair so that the judge can compare them with the samples that were taken before he was cremated. The magistrate expressed her doubts that this lock, which has not followed any chain of custody, can be valid for identification.

Hakim's cremation is a rare case in Spain, the first known to NGOs dedicated to assisting the families of the disappeared. "It's surprising," says Miguel Rodríguez Blanco, professor of State Ecclesiastical Law at the University of Alcalá. "Treating the deceased based on their beliefs is a well-established constitutional principle in Spain, but here there was a lack of care, of diligence because a less irreversible option could have been found," says the expert. "For the Muslim family, this was a very serious attack."

A parallel system

But Hakim's story, once again, has highlighted the odyssey that it means for any foreign family to find a relative who disappeared on their migratory route to Spain.

The absence of official and simple channels has facilitated the emergence of all kinds of intermediaries over the years. Some with legitimate and altruistic interest, others attracted by the business of desperation. Information about the arrival of a boat, the discovery of a corpse or the clothes it was wearing is gold that these intermediaries informally explore through their contacts in the security forces, courts or funeral homes. It is already a parallel system—and susceptible to deception—that does not stop growing.

In Hakim's case alone, two associations inquired through unofficial channels about the identity of the body at the request of the family. To one of them, the judge directly asked her to stop communicating with the court. None of these organizations, Hakim's parents claim, informed them that the easiest way to identify Hakim and recover his remains was to give a power of attorney to a lawyer and a solicitor to mediate for them. This was not an easy task for them either, who do not speak Spanish and did not know any lawyer in Spain, but it is the one that has given them the most results in the shortest time.

The case, despite the fact that almost two years have passed since the discovery of the body, is still open. The judge has now asked Interpol to compare fingerprints on the body with those recorded in the files of the Algerian authorities and has asked for clarification on how she came to the "indubitable" conclusion that the body is that of Hakim. It is the last step to finally close this file that has already accumulated a hundred pages. It's the only thread the Bouzefranes hold onto, praying they've made a mistake.

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