The Navarra public prosecutor’s office has finally decided to appeal Judge Tudela’s decision to archive a case involving the alleged “sale” of a 14-year-old girl to a Catalan family in order to marry her son. This was confirmed by officials at the Superior Court of Navarra (TSJN), who pointed out that the public prosecutor’s office had appealed against the preliminary filing of the case, decided by a judge after the minor declared that his stay in Catalonia was voluntary. This file led to the release of five people detained in the case. These are the parents of a minor, a couple from Morelsza (Lleida state) who are accused of “buying” their 21-year-old son, who resides in Navarre and allegedly entered into a forced marriage with his girlfriend.
The case became known last Saturday when private security forces reported the arrest of parents who “sold” their 14-year-old daughter to a couple from Morelssa in Navarra for 5,000 euros, five bottles of whiskey and food. The investigation began in January, when local police in Cholera learned that a couple from the Romani community had sold their 14-year-old daughter for marriage to another couple in Morersa. A few months later, the Mossos witnessed a minor begging in front of a supermarket in Le Borges Blanques (Lleida). They picked her up and took her to the police station to investigate whether she was homeless, extorted for money, or a victim of the mafia. So they went to the people she requested as “her uncles,” but agents confirmed that they had no common affiliation data with the minor and that a search was conducted about the teenager in the state’s computer system.
Finally, everyone at the police station explained that the minor’s parents gave a supposed “dowry” of 5,000 euros, whiskey and food to a supposed “uncle” so that Moressa could “voluntarily” marry their son. In fact, the Mosso family knows and has a copy of the recording of a party held by Romani rites several months ago during the wedding of a minor to a 21-year-old youth, but this relationship has no legal force and no official records exist.
Catalan police then arrested a Catalan couple and their son on charges of child begging, human trafficking and forced marriage, while the Children’s Directorate took charge of the boy. Private security forces arrested the parents of a minor in Navarre on charges of human trafficking for the purpose of forced marriage. However, after testifying in Tudela’s court, the judge decided that the minor’s testimony was more relevant than the rest of the evidence and ordered the creation of a preliminary file in the case. The girl said she resided in Lleida voluntarily with her parents’ consent and denied that her parents forced her to marry and beg.
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