Francisco Clemente For years he publicly asked for donations and also privately asked for money from Algerian and Moroccan families.
One of the accused of the network that trafficked with the bodies of migrants assures that he used information provided by the Civil Guard (Spanish gendarmerie)
Francisco Clemente, the only one of the detainees to have declared before the judge, boasted of his contacts with the Civil Guard and police
One of the detainees for being part of the network that trafficked in the identification and repatriation of the bodies of migrants trying to reach Spain by inflatable boat pointed the finger at the Civil Guard in his statement before the investigating judge. According to two sources close to the case, Francisco Clemente said on Monday that the information he received and then used to bill the families came from agents of the Armed Institute. Clemente, who was the only one of the 14 detainees to report, said he had contact with Civil Guard agents from several provinces and that they provided him with images of the bodies via WhatsApp so he could identify them.
The accused was arrested last weekend during an operation carried out by the Civil Guard itself. The agents are investigating a sort of funeral cartel which, in apparent alliance with Clemente, profited from the alleged sale of confidential information and the attribution of all funeral procedures to identify and repatriate the bodies in Algeria and Morocco. The network began to be investigated in Cartagena, but it has tentacles in Cádiz, Almería, the rest of the Murcia region, the Balearic Islands, and Alicante, destination provinces for irregular immigration, mainly from Algeria. Clemente is currently at large and the judge has taken away his passport. EL PAÍS, which has been investigating his modus operandi and that of his alleged accomplices since the end of 2021, attempted to contact him several times. His lawyer does not have a working phone and Clemente refuses to speak to this newspaper.
Pirates of the dead of inflatable boats: trade with the bodies of irregular immigration
Images of the bodies, their clothing, or their tattoos were the main raw material with which the respondents did business because they were used to contact families looking for their missing loved ones. By sending the photos to relatives, investigators maintain, Clemente confirmed with them whether it was the person sought and launched the second part of the business, the most lucrative: convincing them to sign identification procedures with certain funeral directors. and repatriation. “They told the families that they were the only ones capable of repatriating the body,” say sources from the investigation. They charged them between 3,000 and 10,000 euros. The network benefited from the fact that in Spain there are no clear protocols for searching and identifying the bodies of migrants attempting to arrive irregularly. Even knowing how to do it, families — abroad and not speaking Spanish — face many obstacles.
Clemente’s statement in which he points the finger at the Civil Guard shares criminal responsibility for the distribution of information protected by law, such as images of bodies. Until now, investigations pointed to officials at the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Cartagena as the source of the leaks to the network. Civil Guard sources defended the “good conduct” of their agents without entering into the detainees’ statements in court.
Clemente used his social networks, with more than 150,000 subscribers, to distribute explicit images of bodies, clothing, jewelry, scars, or tattoos of the deceased to help the families of migrants identify their missing. He did so on behalf of the NGO he worked for, the International Center for the Identification of Missing Migrants (CIPMID). For years he publicly asked for donations and, according to testimonies collected by EL PAÍS, he also asked families for money privately.
Among these images were photos of dead people recently found on the beach, material that very few people have access to. When a corpse is collected, the Civil Guard is present, as well as a judicial secretary, a forensic doctor, and the driver of the van having to take the body to the Institute of Legal Medicine. In one of these published images, which EL PAÍS collected before they were deleted, we can see several pieces of jewelry (a bracelet, earrings, and rings) photographed on a Civil Guard template.
According to the results of the investigation, it does not appear that Clemente obtained the greatest benefits. The head of the network is, according to investigations by the Civil Guard, Rachid S., owner of a funeral home in Murcia. During the search of his house and cars, almost 70,000 euros were found.
Privileged contacts
This is not the first time that Clemente has boasted about his contacts with the security forces. He did this informally, but also in writing, and he used it to gain credibility with the families. Asked in 2021 whether he was the author of the images he sent to the relatives of the missing, he replied: “No, the judicial police did it. We are an NGO searching for missing people. On behalf of the deceased, the Civil Guard sends us the autopsy and photos to search for the family.”
Clemente, about to celebrate his 27th birthday, had already spoken to the Civil Guard about his privileged contacts. As part of proceedings concerning an alleged case of a criminal network trafficking with Syrian refugees and operating in Algeria and Almería, the Almería Civil Guard summoned him as a witness on October 4, 2022. According to the documents consulted by EL PAÍS, the agents questioned him about the origin of the information he published. Clemente explained to them that with the “visibility” he had gained on his social networks, he had a large number of contacts and friends, including members of immigrant families heading to Spain. But he added that “sometimes” it is the Security Forces themselves who “directly appeal” to him, as a delegate of the NGO in Almería, “so that he collaborates in the identification of the bodies found at sea among migrants”.
This Wednesday, the NGO for which Clemente works published a statement. “The CIPMID is a non-profit organization which collaborates closely with the State Security Forces, scrupulously respecting the action protocols,” she assures. In its press release, the NGO denies being the subject of any investigation and describes the accusations made against it as unfounded. She threatens to take “legal measures” if the “unfounded accusations” are not withdrawn within 48 hours.
The Civil Guard, for the moment, is not investigating the NGO, but rather Francisco Clemente, who works for the organization. This can be easily verified on the NGO’s website where he still appears as a collaborator in Almería and on the watermark with the name of CIPMID that Clemente placed on some of the photos of corpses that he distributed.
In fact, in the Civil Guard proceedings in which Clemente testified in 2022, he made it clear that his collaboration in the identification of the bodies, which he carried out on his social networks, was done “always with authorization and through the ‘intermediary of the person above him, called Mari Ángeles’. Mª Ángeles Colsa Herrera is the founder of CIPMID and EL PAÍS tried to contact her this Monday before publishing the name of her organization, but she did not respond. The NGO account itself also published photos of corpses on Facebook.
