Catalan woman freed after 7 years in Omani prison reunites with family in Barcelona

Fátima Ofkir, the Catalan woman released after seven years in prison in Oman, landed at Barcelona Airport on Sunday morning at Barcelona airport, to the excitement of her family and friends.  

Ofkir, from L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, was arrested in 2018, aged 18, and was serving a life sentence for drug trafficking. 

The Sultan of Oman granted her a pardon coinciding with the end of Ramadan. 

Spain's foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, thanked the Sultan for his "humanity" and said that a "discreet" arrival for Fatima had been arranged. 

"Now she must be able to regain her privacy, resume her normal life," Albares said in an interview with Catalunya Ràdio. 

The Minister of Foreign Affairs explained that the Ofkir landed at Barcleona-El Prat at 7:25 am and that she was "well and excited." 

"She has already met her family and friends, and we managed to ensure that she could pass through a discreet area of the airport. The most important thing now is that she can return to normal as soon as possible," Albares said, once again thanking the "gesture" of the Sultanate of Oman and the "numerous" diplomatic efforts to secure the release of Ofkir, who was arrested after being caught with seven kilos of morphine in a hotel in Muscat, the capital of Oman. 

"She was very young and sometimes mistakes can be made. But the most important thing is that she has now been pardoned and that her sentence has ended," the minister said.  

A year ago, it emerged that Spain was finalizing an agreement to transfer Spanish prisoners sentenced in Oman, similar to one signed in 2022 with Qatar that allows those sentenced there to be transferred to Spanish prisons. 

Ofkir's family and her defense, Vosseler Abogados, had repeatedly criticized the "disproportionate" nature of the sentence imposed, and had demanded her repatriation with a petition to the European Parliament. 

They said that the young woman from L'Hospitalet had had an "irregular" trial with a lack of procedural guarantees and that the lawyer recommended by the Spanish embassy in Oman had never practiced law. 

"Psychological nightmare" 

In 2022, Catalan News spoke to Rosario Reyes Carballo, Ofkir's mother, about the "psychological nightmare" of dealing with her daughter's imprisonment on the other side of the world, and her own anguish and frustration at the lack of developments. 

Listen to the podcast below, recorded in 2022, to learn more about the case, including an interview with Ofkir's mother.