A judge acquits a defendant of throwing bottles to the police in the disturbances of Ferraz Street

A Judge from Madrid has decided to acquit a protester accused of launching bottles against the police during the riots on Ferraz Street in November 2023. The magistrate rejects the prosecution’s accusation, who requested up to four years in jail for the young man, and ensures that the statements of the riot agents have not managed to demonstrate that he will throw overwhelming objects to the police line in one of the nights registered in the immediate vicinity of the headquarters of the PSOE in Madrid.

Thousands of people concentrated on various demonstrations in the immediate vicinity of Ferraz Street in November 2023 to protest against the amnesty law and the investiture of Pedro Sánchez as president of the Government. Concentrations convened by political parties such as VOX or groups of their orbit as revolt but also by other extreme right groups and ultra -cut influencers such as Alise Pérez or the Leader of Deskupa.

Many of these concentrations ended in disturbances led by members of neo -Nazis groups and the National Police, in total, arrested 84 people and denounced another 367. The events that analyzed this sentence occurred late in November 10, the eighth night of protests in the vicinity of the headquarters of the PSOE. The defendant, who was then 24 years old, was arrested shortly before eleven o’clock at night and accused by the police of having launched “a glass bottle” to the riot about the confrontations.

Julián Camarillo’s Criminal Court number 24 has chosen to acquit the accused: “We are faced with a probative vacuum and can only reach an absolute sign judgment,” explains the magistrate. Several police officers said that she threw a bottle into a partner, but the magistrate points out that the videos of the moment do not show that it was the one who launched the glass with the defendant, in addition, denying the facts.

One of the police explained that that afternoon he was acting as “infiltrate among the protesters” and that the events occurred when the concentration had already dissolved, although another protester also involved managed to escape. The defendant, on the other hand, said he maintained a “passive protest and indignation attitude, that at that time she worked” for a law firm “and that people” outraged “for” the brutality “of their arrest by countryman agents.

The magistrate even express her “stupor” about the injury of an agent who allegedly crashed with a fence and both knees were injured. According to the prosecution’s accusation, that happened due to the resistance that the defendant presented against his arrest, but the agent offered several different versions throughout the trial and another said that the affected one “slipped.” “It causes stupor that with this information the public accusation indicates that due to the opposition of the accused, the agent rushed against a fence,” says the judge.

The defendant has been defended by the lawyer of Guadalajara Ignacio Menéndez, usual in the extreme right circles and that in November 2023 offered to defend all the detainees in the protests against the amnesty. Menéndez, son of the coup captain Camilo Menéndez, starred in a failed attempt of several people to enter the Valley of the Fallen in October 2019 with a megaphone to the shout of “Honor and do not see” and “I will defend the commander Franco” while a woman struggled with the Civil Guard stating: “We want to go to Mass.”

The dozens of police arrest during the disturbances in Ferraz in November 2023 were translated into various judicial cases that, little by little, are coming to trial in different courts of the city of Madrid. Another of the processes, in which the Prosecutor’s Office asks for more than two years in jail, revolves around Pablo Lucini, one of the leaders of the national democracy ultra -right group, with a lot of presence in the protests of those days around the headquarters of the PSOE.