The 39 passengers have already started the procedures to request asylum.
A group of 39 Lebanese traveling between Egypt and Latin America stayed at the Barcelona airport to request asylum taking advantage of a stopover, Spanish authorities informed AFP on Thursday.
A charter flight Cairo-Bogotá-Quito made a scheduled stopover in the Spanish city on Monday, and that group of passengers “did not continue and requested asylum,” said a source from the Government Delegation (prefecture) in Catalonia.
The 39 passengers have already started the procedures to request asylum and are in an area of the airport where they have essential services, explained the same source.
Passengers are not being held, he clarified: they cannot leave the airport without immigration permits, but they could continue their flight to their destination or return to their origin if they wanted.
The source pointed out that the stopover in Barcelona expected passengers to get off the plane and that this episode has nothing to do with what happened recently at the Palma de Mallorca airport (east).
On November 5, at least 24 passengers on a flight between Morocco and Turkey resorted to a feigned illness to divert them to the Palma de Mallorca airport, at which time they took the opportunity to descend and flee along the runways, forcing flights to be suspended for more than three hours.
Sixteen of them were arrested and the police are looking for the other eight. (I)
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