The testimony of Maxsoud Luiz It is being so heartbreaking that the room has fallen silent several times. The pain you suffer It is transmitted in silence, like a cloud made of fear that fills the air and that gets stuck in the throat and in the tear ducts when remembering Samuel. It can be seen in the faces of the jurors, the lawyers, the public and even the judge presiding over the hearing, even the police officers guarding the accused. Some of them look the same age as Maxsoud, and who knows if they also have children. Their faces shrink at the pace at which he recounts his story.
Samuel’s father just took the stand just a few minutes ago trying to hold back his sobs. Shortly before he passed in silence the barrier of photographers and cameras who were waiting for him at the entrance to the Provincial Court of A Coruña. He is the first to declare this Monday in the trial for the death of his son and can’t resist crying: “It’s so hard to be here, my God!”he is heard saying on one of the occasions when it seems that he will not be able to continue speaking. But he pulls himself together and moves on.
Maxsoud gave yesterday a lesson in dignity and moral strength explaining who he was and what values his son carried, the boy lynched with clubs shouting “fucking faggot!” in the early morning of July 3, 2021 on the Riazor promenade, by a horde of thugs who chased him with sticks down the street until they left him dying on the ground. He did it less than two meters from the bench where the alleged perpetrators of the crime sit, to whom he did not even give a glance or a gesture, much less reproach.
A peaceful and good young man
Contrary to the accusedwho in criminal proceedings are allowed to lie in their statements, Samuel’s father appeared as a witness and was obliged to tell the truth. And if they must be respected presumption of innocenceeven more so, he must be presumed to be completely truthful when he narrates that Samuel was a peaceful and good young man.with a job as a nursing assistant on shifts in a nursing home that she combined with her studies at the university, who had never gotten into a fight, who rejected and fled from violence and who preferred to live with and take care of her parents , whom he frequently accompanied to church, rather than settling alone in another apartment owned by the family.
“He was my best friend, a faithful friend,” described his father, who tells how his death has destroyed him and his wife. For the mere fact of having lost it, yes, but also for the cruelty with which he was taken from him and the suffering to which he was exposed. “Not even a dog is left like that, lying in a ditch. It was hate,” says Maxsoud.
Two of the five accused, for whom the accusations call for sentences of between 22 and 27 years in prison for murder with treachery and crueltythey are charged with the aggravating circumstance of discrimination based on sexual orientationa question that prompted his family’s lawyer to ask Maxsoud if he knew about Samuel’s.
“A father knows his son, but he must also respect him,” he says. “I once asked him about his condition, in the car, one morning when I was taking him to work. He told me: ‘Dad, now is not the time.'”
The way in which a homosexual person is recognized
Throughout the trial, the defense has found it relevant on several occasions to question witnesses for the way in which a homosexual person is recognizedin order to sow doubts about the possibility that his clients acted against Samuel for being one, since, in their version, they could not even have identified him as such. Because of his voice, perhaps? His gestures? His way of dressing? For having a thin and fragile body? For a smile, a grimace, a gesture?
For two weeks all these commonplaces have been repeated as possible elements for intuit Samuel’s sexual condition. And the question one asks listening to Maxsoud is if that really matters, or if, on the contrary, the only relevant thing is the moral nature of the aggressors. With respect to that of Samuel, only he owned the right to express itwith whoever he wanted, how he wanted and at the time he considered appropriate.
“He didn’t die because he was gay,” the witness wrote in his chat. “Maybe, yes,” the accused today replied.
Several of the main witnesses who have attended the oral hearing in the last two weeks have assured that they heard homophobic insults during the several beatings they gave him. And one of the three who appeared yesterday after his father’s testimony assured that Kaio Amaral Silvaone of the accused, suggested a few days after his death in a conversation on Instagram that the crime had been homophobic.
– He didn’t die for being gay–, the witness would have written in his chat.
– At best, yes–, replied the accused today, who had previously asked him to disseminate on his social networks a text that exonerated him of the facts.
The debate over Samuel’s sexual condition
He debate about Samuel’s sexual conditionwhich in life he had denied even to his own father, was food for those networks in the weeks after his death. This Monday, another of the witnesses said that Kaio Amaral had contacted her, a friend of his family, those days, trying to get her to also contribute to expanding the version that he had had nothing to do with the events and attributing them to Diego Mountainthe main accused; to his then girlfriend, Catherine Silvawho would have pushed Samuel’s friend who was trying to help him, since Alejandro Freire, Yumbawho would also have participated in the beating. nothing about Alejandro Miguezthe fifth processed.
Witnesses, however, have also identified the latter as an occasional member of a gang that, he said, was known for its violent and aggressive behaviorwhich had already been involved in other brawls and was characterized by always acting in a group, even if it was against a single person, each of its members joining the fights in which the rest were involved, without caring about the cause or the supposed offense received. . As happened with Samuel.
This way of acting, as Maxsoud narrates under oath, is the opposite of the education he gave his son, based on principles whose origin he explained by laying bare his own life in half a dozen sentences:
“[De niño] My family self-destructed due to drinking and gender violence, I grew up in an environment of violence, but I chose another path and I educated Samuel with other values. I did it until the day they took it away from me. And he was an example for many others. I am not here to judge anyone, nor to accuse anyone.. They have offered me many things to tell about his life, but I will never do it. I don’t want to be on television, I don’t want anyone looking for me and offering me that kind of thing. “We just want to live in peace.”
Only
At the end of the session, the accused who are in provisional detention –Diego, Kaio and Yumba– leave the room accompanied by the police. Those who are free –Catherine and Alejandro Míguez– do so in the company of their lawyers. The public and the press, between improvised huddles. When he concludes his statement, Maxsoud leaves alonethrough the front door, passing silently between the cameras and microphones. Before the hearing, the judge offered him to enter and exit through another door, but he rejected it. What would he have to hide from?
Because Maxsoud could have avoided his appearance, which was at the request of his lawyer, but then no one would have been able to tell the jury who was samuelwhat values he carried and what exemplary education he had received, so different from that shown by his murderers. It could even have been saved part of the painful trancesince during her statement the judge alerted the prosecutor that the witness was breaking down, that he was having a really bad time and that perhaps he should conclude his interrogation. He heard it and composed himself again:
– No no. Please do your job –. And he continues forward, answering the prosecutor’s questions, fighting against the pain, holding back his tears and filling the air with clouds made not of fear, but of dignityof the same matter that forms the memory of samuel and that Maxsoud builds phrase by phrase, blow by blow on the conscience of those who took his life.
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