Just one year ago, on December 29, 2024, Mamouth Bakhoum drowned in the Gaudalquivir River while trying to flee a patrol of Local Police officers. A date marked on the calendar for his family and his compatriots who, throughout these months, have sought answers to a justice that contradicts itself. While the Seville court referred the final case to the “behavior” of the 43-year-old man, the Andalusian High Court of Justice pointed to police action as the cause of the tragic event.
Faced with these judicial resolutions, Saliou Ndiaye, secretary general of the Association of Manteros of Seville and president of the Association of Senegalese, reiterates what he had asked twelve months ago: an impartial investigation. “The community has a feeling of helplessness and incapacity, because everything could have been resolved in another way,” he underlines in response to this media. His brothers live in the city, whom he supports in their mourning and whom he understands in this feeling of disbelief, almost of disenchantment, when they learned of the orders of the Spanish justice.
Bakhoum had his papers in order and financially supported his wife, his one-year-old daughter and his parents. He sold 34 fake football team t-shirts on Avenida de la Constitución and, with two sticks, as soon as he saw the police arriving, he fled. A deadly race of just over a kilometer until he reaches the dock, where he jumps into the water and, without knowing how to swim and caught in the confusion and anxiety of the moment, he dies underwater. In the video broadcast, we see two police officers who, after several minutes, dive to try to locate him while the passers-by who recorded the moment commented “you can’t see him”, “you just can’t see him”.
Complaint to a parliamentarian
The persecution of Bakhoum that December afternoon would later enter the political field. On April 4, two judicial police officers entered the Andalusian Parliament in plain clothes and informed the deputy of Adelante Andalucía, José Ignacio García, of the complaint filed by the Superior Prosecutor’s Office for an alleged crime of insulting the police. Why was such a procedure carried out? The politician had participated in one of the rallies organized in the capital Seville after the death of the victim, where he questioned the action of the police and added that it was a “case of institutional racism, police violence and repression”.
In this way, Mamouth’s death reached the High Court collaterally. The judges did not examine the police action, but rather the complaint filed by the higher prosecutor’s office against the parliamentarian. On the one hand, the TSJA approved the deputy’s freedom of expression and rejected the arguments of the prosecutor, who accused García of having “exceeded” his censorship when analyzing the actions of the agents. At the same time, the judge rapporteur, Miguel Pasquau, drew up a very critical assessment of the events and recalled that the Senegalese man, like other immigrant manteros, died following a police intervention, in a social context where the undocumented foreigner finds himself in a very vulnerable situation.
The dismissal granted by the court was considered valid, but not before expressing that it was a “legitimate, although at the same time criticizable, exercise of freedom of expression by a deputy who expresses a demand of a political nature and protests against an action of the local police without which the tragic event would not have occurred,” the order states verbatim. For its part, the Seville court determined three months later that the agents’ actions on December 29 were “adequate, prudent and diligent.” Thus, “any indication” of the alleged commission of a crime of reckless homicide by members of the security forces was excluded, as reported by the legal representation of Mamouth’s family.
In this sense, it is worth recalling that the president of the Court of Instruction 17, in an order dated April 15 of this year, managed to access the security cameras of the area and described the intervention of the agents as “police closure of the victim at the foot of the bridge” from where she fell into the river and died. Nevertheless, the appeal for reform and the subsidiary appeal against the order of January 23 by which the provisional classification and archiving of the procedure were agreed.
“Institutional racism”
After the filing of the case in August this year, deputy José Ignacio García reaffirmed in statements to this media that the man died “in the context of a police action carrying out his work, that he was a street vendor.” “The important thing is that a case of institutional racism, police violence and repression remains unpunished and, with this case, a very dangerous message will be sent to the Police, which is the message of impunity, that they can do anything,” he warned.
A year later, Ndiaye has only one demand: “We ask that the causes of death be clarified, even if the courts have decided to dismiss the case and determine that he was not persecuted. » “It was abandoned for reasons of survival, but they did not want to assess the consequences either,” he insists. The representative of the manteros knows firsthand the context in which his compatriots live. Despite protests and citizen mobilization, he warns that they live with “constant harassment” and continue to be subject to the same administrative and legal obstacles that they encountered once they set foot on Andalusian territory.
In 2018, something similar had already happened: Senegalese citizen Mame Mbaye Ndiaye, 34, died of a heart attack on a street in Lavapiés, pursued by several municipal police officers. He sold perfumes in the Plaza Mayor in central Madrid, and his death caused a massive reaction in the neighborhood. More than 300 people gathered almost at nightfall in the neighborhood to protest against the police action and against the pressure, they denounced, that existed in the area against the manteros.
However, migration, as a hot media topic, present in all political gatherings and the most common dart among parliamentary groups, is increasingly cracking society. The proof is that just a few days ago, fifty people prevented the entry into the Verge parish of Montserrat, thanks to a device managed by the Red Cross, of fifteen migrants expelled from an abandoned institute in Badalona, B9. Without knowing where to go, in cold weather and without social resources, these people were directed to the center approved by the Generalitat of Catalonia until a better alternative was found.
“There are those who want to show that migration is the cause of the problem, and once you are pointed out, you are on everyone’s lips,” he laments. This is why he asks for a critical exercise on the part of the people with whom he lives in this metropolis, cradle of so many cultures, so that his modus operandi It relies on contrasting information and verified data, instead of falling into “manipulation”. Because “who is the most heard voice in the media? he asks, “them,” he agrees, “those who want to gain votes by accusing a single party, like those of Vox.”
In order to find a solution to everything that happened, the association tried to meet Andalusian political institutions. Despite the efforts, “there has been no effect, they don’t want to do anything, even if it’s in their hands,” he adds. When the Christmas period returns, they will once again organize another demonstration in memory of the figure of Mamouth Bakhoum and in order to report and make people understand the institutional discrimination that their group faces day after day.
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