The frantic first hours of Fatima ofkir in freedom: « When I am more stabilized I can speak » | News from Catalonia
Fatima Ofkir is already in Barcelona. The young Catalan, released after spending seven years in an Oman prison sentenced for drug traffickinghas landed this Sunday at El Prat airport when a few minutes from 7,00 in the morning from an Abu Dhabi flight. His first hours in freedom have been frantic, always next to his lawyer, Mònica Santiago: bureaucratic papers, emotional impact, transfer to dependencies of the Civil Guard, tiredness and uncertainty of family and friends, who have not been able to receive it as they wanted at the airport. « I am back at home. When I feel a little better and I am perfectly stabilized, I can talk to everyone, » he said shortly after noon in a video broadcast by the Vosseler Lawyers, the cabinet that represents it.
The party that O ofkir had after his release will have to wait. The mother and a dozen people awaited her in the arrivals lobby between strong media expectation, but they have not been able to find her. After an hour and a half of waiting, a airport security member has left from inside the arrival enclosure to announce that Fatima would not appear there. « It will not come out, » he said, and has returned inside the disbelief of the staff.
His mother has gone to ask for explanations and the worker has repeated the same phrase: « They have told me that it will not come out here, I cannot tell you anything else. » The scene was uncomfortable due to the lack of information and the restlessness of the relatives, and has been repeated with a call to the lawyer, who has confirmed that the young woman would go out in another area without the knowledge of the mother and her friends, who were waiting for her. The conversation has been tense.
The family and the group of friends have abandoned the arrivals area and has moved to another space further, from where they showed signs of uncertainty. It was nine in the morning, and the same time Minister José Manuel Albares, assured Catalunya Ràdio, that Fatima had met with his relatives in a place away from the gaze of the media. His words have bothered the mother because they did not fit the lived. « We do not know where it is, although we know it has arrived, » said one of the friends who has gone to look for her. Shortly before 11.00 in the morning and without more news, the group of friends has abandoned the airport. A few minutes later his mother has done with his failed face. « I don’t understand why I haven’t been able to see it, » he shared.
Vosseller sources say that the return home has been emotionally intense for Fatima. And that on medical recommendation the administration has preferred to avoid its media exposure. It has been then when, even in airport units, a long bureaucratic procedure has passed to put the papers of someone who has passed seven years away from home in order. The lawyer, Mònica Santiago, has asked for time for the young woman to « stabilize » and face a press conference in the next few days. The girl’s father has been able to greet her in the lawyers of the lawyers, according to the firm himself.
Ofkir, 25, was sentenced in 2018 to life imprisonment in Oman after being arrested in a hotel in the country with a cargo of morphine and was the youngest Spanish prison in a foreign prison. Since then he has been imprisoned in the Moscat Women’s prison without the various Spanish administrations, including the delegation of the Barcelona Government, which had interceded in the case for seven years, achieved their release. According to his law firm, Ofkir was convicted « without any judicial guarantee or possibility of defense », being considered a member of an international drug trafficking band. The Government requested three years ago the pardon for the young woman, and finally this arrived this week, coinciding with the usual pardons in Oman after the Ramadan celebration. « I’m already at home, » Fatima celebrates.
