After the first decision of its kind taken by the king Mohamed VI which is the revocation of the royal pardon granted to Spanish pedophile of Iraqi origin, Daniel Galvan Vina, Moroccans now are wondering about the next step to be taken to bring the criminal back to jail in Morocco and whether this is legally possible. In this regard, it should be noted that there is a convention between Morocco and Spain on judicial cooperation signed on June 24, 2009 regarding the extradition of perpetrators of crimes.
According to Article I of this agreement, the contracting parties undertake to deliver to each other,according to the rules and conditions set forth in this Convention, those who are in the territory of one of the two countries who are convicted of a crime or wanted for imprisonment verdicts issued by the judicial authorities of the other country.
However, the text of this agreement exempts citizens of both countries from the extradition process. This is illustrated by Article 3 of the Convention, which says that neither of the two countries will extradite its citizens to the other country. Since the pedophile Daniel is Spanish by nationality, the agreement will not apply to him.
Thus, there are three possible scenarios although the most likely scenario is that Daniel will spend the remainder of his prison sentence in Spain. The first scenario is that Spain would not bother itself with the legal status of Daniel and favor its strategic interests with Morocco. In this regard, considering the very distinguished political and economic relations between the two countries, there is a remote likelihood that Spain extradites Daniel to help Morocco to put an end to the state of rage and social ‘boiling’ caused by the royal amnesty that put Morocco on the brink of instability, which is not to the favor of Spain, as it needs a stable Morocco at this time of economic crisis.
The second scenario is that the Spanish authorities would drop the citizenship of the child rapist. In this case, Spain would subject the rapist, Daniel, to the Convention on judicial cooperation between the two countries, since he would not be a Spanish citizen.
The third scenario, and the more likely one, is that the Spanish authorities will sentence Daniel Galván to spend the remainder of his prison sentence in Spain, especially that the judicial cooperation agreement signed between the two countries in 1997 allows the Spaniards to spend the rest of the prison sentences in Spain.
In this regard, Mr. Alberto Navarro, Spain's ambassador to Morocco, told El Pais newspaper on Sunday that the judicial cooperation convention between the two countries will not apply to Daniel as he holds citizenship, but the revocation of the royal pardon would open up the possibility for him to spend the remainder of his prison sentence in Spain.