Spain’s interior minister has defended the behaviour of police who were filmed beating and pepper-spraying a young sub-Saharan African man as he climbed over the border fence between Morocco and Spain’s north African enclave of Melilla, insisting the officers’ use of force was “proportionate”.
The video emerged last week as about 3,700 people tried to scale the six-metre (20ft) fence over two days. On Wednesday, an unprecedented 2,500 people tried to clamber over the border, of whom 491 succeeded. The following day, 1,200 people attempted to cross over, with 380 making it.
