A video recorded by a passenger on board the plane and circulated yesterday through social networks shows how the escape took place in Son Sant Joan on Friday night. The words of a passenger before the unusual scene leave little doubt about the intentions of the group: “They’re escaping, they’re escaping! The boys are staying in Spain!”.
In the sequence, captured after the supposedly ill passenger who caused the landing was taken to the hospital, you can see how several young people start to run down the aisle of the aircraft . Some of them push away anyone who gets in their way. They all go down the stairs, start running down the runway, run several metres to a nearby fence and jump over it to get out of the enclosure.
The escape has already been a failure for almost half of them. Of the 21 people who rushed out of the plane, nine had been arrested last night. Police and Guardia Civil have kept the operation open to locate the rest. The call from a resident of Marratxí was key to locate several of the escapees on Friday. A patrol of the Local Police arrived at 11:15pm in calle sa Comuna de sa Cabaneta after receiving a tip off alerting them to the presence of four people with a “suspicious attitude” and that could be part of the group of fugitives from the plane Air Arabia Maroc. The officers identified three of them with their passports, while the other had no documentation. They admitted to the agents that they had escaped from the plane, were arrested and the Guardia Civil took charge of them. Yesterday morning in Figueral the Policia Local captured another of the escapees. The operation deployed by the Guardia Civil and the Policia National arrested at least four other fugitives in the vicinity of the airport and on the road to Manacor.
To these nine arrests another is added of the passenger who apparently faked the illness, and was held after being discharged from the hospital Son Llàtzer along with the person who accompanied him to the health center and then took the opportunity to escape. In addition, a passenger was arrested inside the aircraft for assaulting one of the agents of the Guardia Civil who, after the mass escape, went to the plane. Thus, of the 24 people involved in the incident, 12 have already been arrested .
All of them are initially accused of infringing the law on aliens for their irregular entry into Spain, but their judicial prospects are still uncertain. The Police accuse the alleged ill passenger of a crime of favoring illegal immigration, which raises suspicions that his illness was part of an organized plan. In addition, as the delegate of the Government in the Balearic Islands, Aina Calvo explained yesterday, those who ran out on the runways and caused the closure of the airport could be accused of violating the rules against air safety.
Serious crimes
Calvo recalled that as occurs in the case of a boat arriving by sea, two expulsion proceedings have been opened in order to return them to their country. However, the progress of the investigation could lead to the imputation of serious crimes to stop their forced return to Morocco. The delegate of the Government, in this sense, pointed out that it will be the judicial authority who will determine their responsibilities. “We have to wait for more data to see what crimes they will be charged with,” he added.