IA group of 39 Palestinians applied for asylum in Spain. Spanish authorities said on Friday that after stopping in Barcelona on Monday, he refused to re-board his plane, which was supposed to take off for South America.
After five days of police custody at the airport, 29 of them were formally allowed to step onto Spanish soil on Friday. The asylum applications of the other ten are still being scrutinized. The flight had started in Cairo and was destined for Quito, the capital of Ecuador.
A representative of the UN refugee agency said the travelers have refugee documents from the United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees. Many of them have already applied for asylum in Egypt and Ethiopia. Spain’s Interior Ministry said it could take months to review asylum applications.
In early November, a group of passengers came out of an airplane that had crashed in Mallorca and tried to bypass the entry control. Police are still investigating whether the reason for the emergency landing – a medical emergency – was bogus.
