Child Seeks Help After Being Abandoned
The National Police have arrested a Moroccan citizen accused of travelling to Gran Canaria with his young son, only to abandon the child on the island without documentation and attempt to return to his home country alone. The incident came to light last Friday when a Moroccan minor presented himself asking for help at a Red Cross office in Telde, who immediately alerted the authorities.
Father Detained at Airport
According to a statement released this Tuesday by the Canary Islands Regional Police Headquarters, the boy stated he had arrived in Gran Canaria by plane with his father, who intended to return to Morocco alone, leaving him behind in Spain and taking his documents with him. The child was taken into the care of the Canary Islands Police and the Juvenile Prosecutor’s Office, who transferred him to a care centre in the south of Gran Canaria, where he remains under institutional guardianship and protection.
Upon investigating, officers confirmed that the minor and his father had arrived together in Gran Canaria on 15 December on a flight from Morocco. Using airport security footage, an image of the father was obtained and a search operation was launched. On 19 December, the suspect was detected at Gran Canaria Airport as he tried to board a flight to Marrakech. He was arrested at that moment, police confirmed.
Second Similar Case in a Month
The boy’s father was brought before an on-duty judge in Telde, who ordered him to be remanded in custody pending trial for the offence of child abandonment. This is the second time an incident of this type has occurred in the Canaries in the past month: at the end of November, police arrested a man in Tenerife who had arrived on the island on a flight from Casablanca, Morocco, with his son, whom he abandoned so the child would be taken into care in Spain as an unaccompanied minor.
That case was discovered when the boy presented himself at a police station claiming he had arrived by migrant boat, a story soon disproved when records showed he had entered the island through Tenerife South Airport with his father. His father was arrested as he tried to board a flight to Seville.
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