Migrants land in Mauritania, face Spanish screening

NOUADHIBOU, Mauritania, Feb 12 (Reuters) About 370 Asian and African migrants whose ship was intercepted at sea on its way to Spain came ashore in northern Mauritania today to be screened by Spanish police, officials said.

In what observers described as an almost entirely Spanish immigration control operation conducted outside Spain, the migrants, all men, filed off the battered Marine 1 freighter onto a dock at the Mauritanian port of Nouadhibou.

They were given health checks and food and drink by Spanish and Mauritanian Red Cross officials in a makeshift treatment centre, and then passed into the custody of dozens of Spanish police officers for identity screening.

The operation was agreed at the weekend between Mauritania and Spain. It followed a diplomatic wrangle last week over who should take charge of the migrants, whose vessel was intercepted by the Spanish coastguard off West Africa over a week ago.

''Various groups have come off the boat and are receiving health checks ... there are no serious health cases,'' Olivia Acosta of the Spanish Red Cross told Reuters.

Some of the migrants were suffering from bronchitis, diarrhoea and sea sickness.

Some looked apprehensive as they came ashore to face a reception committee that included dozens of Spanish police, in civilian clothes but wearing fluorescent green jackets.

Consular officials from India, Pakistan and Guinea were also at the dock to meet the migrants, who had said they were mostly from Indian Kashmir but were also thought to include sub-Saharan Africans.

''Up to now, they are mostly from India,'' said Michael Tschanz of the International Organisation of Migration (IOM), which is hoping to assist those of the migrants who want to voluntarily return home.

EXTRATERRITORIAL OPERATION After identity checks, the migrants were due to be escorted by Spanish police officers to planes which would either repatriate them to their countries of origin -- if these could be established -- or fly them to Spanish territory where their immigration status would be decided, diplomats said.

They said the reception and processing of the migrants by Spanish police in Mauritania was a curious extraterritorial operation being conducted hundreds of miles from Spanish soil.

''They are being treated as illegal immigrants before they even arrived where they were heading,'' one diplomat commented.

Mauritania had initially refused to accept the Marine 1, which is believed to have set sail from Guinea and was heading towards Spain's Canary islands.

The ship sent out an SOS signal after its motors broke down in international waters off Senegal on Feb. 2 and was intercepted the next day by the Spanish coastguard which towed it close to Mauritania's fishing port of Nouadhibou.

The Marine 1 has become a test case for Spain, which launched a diplomatic offensive in West Africa last year in a bid to stem soaring illegal migration from the poverty-stricken region to the Canaries.

Madrid has been offering increased aid in return for help to halt clandestine migration.

Reuters KR DB2240