Karim El Baqqali, arrested in Barbate (Cádiz) in the early hours of Thursday as the alleged perpetrator of the deaths of the Civil Guards Miguel Ángel González and David Pérez on February 9 in the port of this town, has admitted to the judge, as he had done hours before to the police investigators, that he was piloting the speedboat that collided that night with the boat carrying the victims, according to legal sources. El Baqqali, who has other pending cases in both Spain and Morocco for drug-related offenses, has denied, however, that his intention was to kill them, and has claimed that he accidentally ran them over, as he tried to avoid the police boat at the last moment but couldn’t. After hearing his statement, the judge ordered his provisional detention without bail accused of two counts of murder, four counts of attempted murder, six counts of assault, one count of smuggling, and one count of belonging to a criminal organization, as had been proposed by the prosecution and all parties. In his nearly two-hour statement, El Baqqaly, 32, tried to justify his actions that night on the basis of alleged economic and family necessity, with several children to support, and that the organization he worked for transporting drug shipments between Morocco and the Peninsula had forced him to work piloting speedboats. He also emphasized that he was not feeling well that day because he hadn’t slept enough the night before. The confessed perpetrator of the deadly collision emphasized to the judge that initially he thought he had only lightly struck the victims’ boat and since learning from news articles that there were two fatalities, he had trouble sleeping. In this regard, he stated that he had wanted to return to Spain for a long time to tell his version of what happened and ask for forgiveness, but he felt threatened by other drug traffickers and had not done so until his safety was guaranteed. In his statement, El Baqqaly provided the names of the other three people who were with him on the speedboat, whom the Civil Guard had already identified, and against whom the judge issued international arrest warrants on Thursday. At the end of the statement, the professional association Justice for the Civil Guard (JUCIL, majority among the agents and serving as the prosecution in the case) issued a statement in which it highlighted that police reports in the possession of the judge contradict the investigated individual’s version that the collision was an accident. The Unified Association of the Civil Guard (AUGC) insisted that the case does not end here and aspires to “get to the bottom of it and hold accountable each and every person who had any degree of involvement” in the incident. Meanwhile, the Integral Defense Association of Specialized Victims (ADIVE), also acting as the prosecution, criticized the fact that El Baqqaly had attempted to provide a perfectly prepared exculpatory narrative during his statement.
El Baqqaly’s version that his intention was not to kill the officers and that it was all an accident contradicts the conclusions of the report prepared by the Central Operative Unit (UCO) and the Cadiz Command of the Civil Guard about the incident after viewing three gigabytes of video files recorded that day in the port of Barbate by eight different cameras. In this police document ― incorporated into the case in May and which exonerated the six men initially detained for these acts from the crime ― the investigators explained that the high-speed inflatable boat (ENAV, as they are known in the police sphere) allegedly piloted by the now arrested individual was the only one that harassed the agents’ boat out of the six speedboats that had taken refuge that night in the Barbate port due to the storm that was pounding the Cadiz coasts. In these videos ― one of them recorded with the camera carried by one of the agents ― it was seen how the inflatable boat allegedly piloted by El Baqqali constantly harassed the Civil Guard’s boat for two minutes and 41 seconds until it fatally struck them. During that time, the images showed the harassment, which included five previous ramming attempts and a sixth final one that ended the lives of the two agents and injured four other colleagues. “All the occupants of the speedboat acted with a clear and unequivocal intention to end the lives of the Civil Guards operating the official vessel, with a clear disregard for their lives,” concluded the investigators. The police document emphasized that when the Civil Guards put the boat in the water to try to get the six speedboats that were in the port to leave, the boat allegedly piloted by El Baqqali was the only one that turned “toward the patrol boat,” while the other five chose “opposite movements, i.e., moving away” to distance themselves. This despite the fact that it was evident that it was a vessel of the law enforcement agency, both because of the blue light it had on and because its occupants wore their uniforms. This hostile attitude was confirmed within a few seconds, as in addition to not attempting to move away from the agents, its occupants tried to dazzle them with a laser pointer, something they continued to do throughout the harassment. The report detailed that “the first offensive” against the patrol boat occurred just 41 seconds after it was in the water, and subsequent ones followed every few seconds. The audio from the video recorded by one of the agents captured their desperate dialogue during the moments leading up to the fatal collision: “Oh God, Oh God, shoot, shoot, damn it, shoot into the air, damn it.” “They’re coming for us.” The police document highlighted that the speedboat positioned itself for that final collision at “a sufficient distance that allowed them to reach a high speed, returning back toward the official boat to finally, without deviating from the trajectory to avoid the collision, attack it.”
The investigation revealed that after the murder of the two Civil Guards, El Baqqali hid in the Moroccan town of Dalía, near Ceuta. He stayed there afterward, initially without taking stringent security measures, confident that the following hours after the incident the six occupants of another speedboat in Barbate the same night were accused of the crime and taken into custody. This changed in May when the UCO handed over the report that absolved these individuals and it became known that they were searching for a Moroccan citizen named Karim, albeit with an incorrect surname, linked to his uncle’s organization, a drug lord called Pus Pus. Then he “began to be seen less often on the streets of his town,” according to a source. Meanwhile, investigations progressed in Spain. Firstly, investigators located the speedboat that fatally collided with his colleagues. It was an inflatable boat that was intercepted on March 17, more than a month after the murder, 20 miles south of La Antilla beach in Huelva. That day it was manned by five people who were arrested and charged with drug trafficking, smuggling, destruction, and assault against the authorities, but their involvement in the Barbate incident was ruled out. At the same time, the Civil Guard interviewed numerous witnesses who, according to sources, provided new evidence confirming suspicions about the involvement of El Baqqali and the other three occupants whose identities have not been disclosed. With all this information, the Civil Guard prepared a comprehensive report that was submitted to the judge last Wednesday, hours before the arrest of the alleged pilot. His arrest, prompted by his return to Spain feeling cornered by the investigation and drug trafficking clans, has been the latest step, so far, in Operation Memorial, which “will not conclude until the arrest of the other individuals involved,” according to sources from the law enforcement agency.
