A satellite system that links together two continents has become the latest weapon in Europe's armory against illegal immigration. Police forces in Spain, Senegal, and Mauritania will connect up to a single, high-speed communications and data network to accomplish this task.

The EU-funded Sea Horse system helps relocate the effort to prevent illegal immigration from the coast of Africa, with stations opened in port cities such as Dakar in Senegal, Praia in Cape Verde and Nouadhibou in Mauritania. The system should allow police to track immigrant vessels as they are spotted travelling up the Atlantic coast of Africa and then veering west in search of the Canary Islands, or heading north for the southern shores of Spain or Portugal. Police can plot charts and draw up shared maps of where vessels carrying would-be illegal immigrants are going and what routes they follow.

The information is being centralized in the Canary Island capital of Las Palmas, where frontier police forces have formed a co-ordination centre. The system will receive information from individual police forces and maritime patrols. Spanish aircraft also patrol the waters between Africa and the Canary Islands, which has seen more than 100,000 immigrants land in 2,800 boats since the immigration route from west Africa opened 14 years ago. Although 151 immigrants arrived in the first week of this year, the co-operation of west African countries has allowed Spain to reduce numbers.

(Source: Guardian.co.uk, Giles Tremlett)