Geneva-based NGO Border Forensics released a counter-investigation report on Tuesday claiming that the deaths of 37 migrants in June 2022 along Morocco’s border with the Spanish enclave of Melilla were caused by the actions of both countries’ law enforcement agents.

On June 24, 2022, at least 37 people lost their lives when a group of African asylum seekers attempted to cross a border station in Melilla. The UN condemned the border security forces’ actions, highlighting the lack of safe and legal routes of migration and barriers to accessing official border stations. Both Spain and Morocco denied responsibility for the deaths and disappearances that occurred on that day. Human rights advocates in Spain and Morocco demanded that inquiries be conducted after the incident.

According to Border Forensics, their report “The Nador-Melilla Border Trap,” made in collaboration with Irídia-Centre for the Defense of Human Rights and the Moroccan Association for Human Rights (AMDH), is an effort to investigate and reveal the scope of the violence that occurred. The study contains survivors’ testimonies and satellite photographs, showing evidence that reveals Moroccan officials pushed people seeking asylum to the border while militarizing it.

Border Forensics claimed in its report that:

Our analysis shows that the many dead and missing during the massacre of June 24, 2022, were no accident. On the contrary, the migrants were repeatedly directed towards the Barrio Chino border crossing and violently repressed by Moroccan and Spanish law enforcement agents once they were trapped there. … All these elements combined to form a death trap, which the Spanish and Moroccan law enforcement agents executed on June 24, 2022.

Several non-governmental organizations in Spain and Morocco, such as Walking Borders, maintain that the event resulted in more fatalities than the 23 the Moroccan authorities had confirmed. The organization had earlier reported that the incident claimed the lives of at least 37 people.