Samuel Luiz He was 24 years old when they murdered him shouting “fucking faggot” on the seafront of A Coruña. The crime took place on the night of July 3, 2021. Samuel had gone out partying with a friend, to celebrate the reopening of nightlife venues after almost four months of the pandemic. The clock showed 3:00 in the morning when the collective lynching broke out. The five accused insist on denying their relationship with the death of the young manbut the first statements before the popular jury also reveal the first contradictions.
This summer marks three years of homophobic crime that ended the life of the Brazilian student. Last week the trial began in the Provincial Court of A Coruña: Diego Montaña, Alejandro Freire, Kaio Amaral Silva, Alejandro Míguez and Catherine Silva They will go through the dock before the popular jury’s ruling. Galician Television has asked to censor their names and faceswho were anonymous until early August 2021, almost a month after the homicide. The ultras took advantage of the time that the case was under summary secrecy to fill social networks and Telegram groups with hate. How are racist hoaxes spread?
The xenophobic speeches when the word crime appears in the headline are nothing new. The cases of Mocejón (Toledo) and Southport (United Kingdom), a few months ago, demonstrate the modus operandi of pseudomedia, tweeters and far-right agitators. Mateo, 11, died after an attack by a hooded man on the soccer field of this Toledo municipality. The networks were filled with speculation about the nationality of the perpetrator of the stabbing. The first rumors pointed to a “Maghrebi” manwho lived in a hotel in the city with other “illegal immigrants.” The Civil Guard, however, arrested the real person responsible: a 20-year-old boy, of Spanish nationalitywho recognized the facts.
In Southport The situation was practically similar. At the beginning of August, a hoax began to circulate that “a muslim immigrant“. The news was widely spread by accounts related to the extreme right. Nothing could be further from the truth: a few hours later, official information denied this hypothesis. The alleged perpetrator of the events, according to police sources, was a 17-year-old man of English nationality and Rwandan parents. Hatred, however, was already sown and violence flooded the streets of England and Northern Ireland.
With the murder of Samuel Luiz exactly the same thing happened. Information interest in the young man’s death grew after the statements of one of his friends were made public, warning of the possible homophobic motivation for the crime. Twitter users and commentators spread, without evidence, that it had been a Latin band. The hoaxes about the alleged origin of the murderers, “Brazilian” or “Moroccan”, were also unfounded. The arrest of the alleged perpetrators, all of them Spanish nationals, did not serve to stop the cascade of fake news unleashed
“Squatters” and “immigrants”: the construction of a hoax
The hoaxes about the lynching and death of Samuel Luiz even reached parliaments. The leader of Vox, Santiago Abascalassured on the sets that among those detained there was an “immigrant” and a “radical feminist.” The news found parallel in the army of trolls that surrounds the ultra agitator Alvise Perezat that time an independent political advisor – after a brief stay at Ciudadanos. The now deputy in the European Parliament published that the perpetrators of the crime belonged to “a gang of 12 south americans” and called the investigation a “massive media hoax.”
“Of the crime of Samuel [Luiz] It is no longer spoken, because The murderers were a squatter, an immigrant and a far-left militant“. Santiago Abascal insisted in every possible way with this quote. He released it for the first time on July 12nine days after the crime, in front of the microphones of Federico Jiménez Losantos’s radio. The leader of the Spanish extreme right also spoke of a “radical feminist“and went so far as to link, without evidence, one of the murderers to the Riazor Blues. He spread the same speech in Ana Rosa’s Programwhere he regretted that Vox had been singled out for the murder of a “young homosexual.”
The only ones migrant people Those involved in the case had nothing to do with the lynching: the two young Senegalese who tried to save his life to Samuel Luiz. Ibrahima and Magatte were walking along the promenade, near their home, when they saw the helpless and injured boy on the ground. They tried to help him, without success. They did not call the police for fear of being arrested, as they “did not have their papers” in order. The Government, as a reward, granted them residence cards and both managed to regularize their situation in Spain. This decision opened the debate on whether migrants and asylum seekers are only worthy of documentation when they perform some kind of heroic act.
Ayuso and “the boy from Galicia”
The left assumed from the beginning that there was a homophobic pretext behind the crime, a reality that ended up politicizing – even more – the case. Pedro Sanchez He came out to condemn the “savage and ruthless” acts, and also promised to work to not take “not even a step back in rights and freedoms.” Alberto Núñez Feijóoat that time president of the Xunta, agreed when defining the murder as a “brutal and irrational” episode, but questioned its LGTBIphobic motivation: “I don’t dare classify it as homophobia.“.
The icing on the cake was, of course, Isabel Diaz Ayuso. The Madrid president stirred up the debate after being accused by the opposition [liderada por Más Madrid] to remain silent in front of the escalation of homophobic attacks throughout the country. “I see badly the reversal of the burden of proof, and accusing, without reasons, without evidence, as happened with the boy from Galicia. The logic of the left is curious… If they kill a boy in Galicia, it’s my fault“, ironically the regional leader, five days after the crime. The trial will last until November 18, when the nine members of the popular jury will decide on the execution of the crime and the role that each of the five accused had in the murder of Samuel Luiz.
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