When questioned that photos be published and recordings broadcast with recognizable images of the murderers of Samuel Luizappealing to the parallel public (harm) they suffer without having yet been declared guilty of their death, forgets that the worst newscast penalty The victim has taken it: his name, his origins, his profession, his friends, his family, his way of life, your sexual orientation…All of this has been published and has been the subject of debate in the press, radio, television, internet and social networks, without him giving before his death, nor being able to give, of course, his consent to it.
This Wednesday, as established in the trial calendar once a week, the judge presiding over the oral hearing for the murder of Samuel He allowed cameras and photographers to enter the room so that they could take and then disseminate images of the accused. Also from her lawyers, from those of the accusations, from the prosecutor, from the court lawyer… Even from herself. Of everyone except the jury membersfor obvious reasons.
For the witnesses who testified after the photographers came out, as has happened to all those who have appeared since the trial began, and as will probably happen to those who do so in the remainder of the process, a group is always waiting for them. of cameramen and journalists at the entrance to the Provincial Court of A Coruña. Their faces are also captured and then they appear with their names in the newspapers, on the networks, on television programs… The interrogations to which the parties are subjected are intense, and they are asked Why didn’t they try to save Samue?l, even calling the police. Some answer that because they were afraid.
Linked to a homophobic and brutal crime
Appear with an open face on a newspaper page, in a news program or in a tweet, linked to a crime so presumably homophobic as brutal as Samuel’s, it is not pleasant for the accused who have pleaded not guilty. But neither is it for witnesses, especially if they recognize that they did nothing to prevent it and who remained passive observers of the savage beating. Not even for those who did show a civic and supportive attitude, such as Ibrahima Diack and Magatte N’Diaye. It is not, of course, for the people closest to the victim.
In fact, the popular accusation exercised by the Alas Coruña association, announced this Wednesday that it is renouncing the interrogation of Samuel’s mother, scheduled for next Monday, in order to spare her the presumed ordeal that she would have to go through. According to sources close to the family, She has been devastated since her son was killed.. He has not recovered and perhaps never will.
The resignation was accepted. And the judge also agreed to study, after listening to the parties and the jury, the private prosecution’s request for one of the key witnesses in the trial, who will appear on Thursday and whose testimony could dismantle the defenses’ versions, which do protected by a screen, after being denied to do so by videoconference. “He’s afraid”summarized the family lawyer. The judge will announce her decision at the beginning of Thursday’s hearing. Only the defense of Diego Mountainthe main accused of the crime. However, his lawyer, Luis Salgadodid not object to the requests for resignation of two other witnesses.
Wednesday’s hearing was not the best day for Montaña’s lawyer, because the impartial witnesses who witnessed the events pointed out his client, two of them without hesitation and another with probability, as the person they heard scream. “I’m going to stab you in the heart, I have nothing to lose!”. This supports the thesis that he would have intended to end Samuel’s life, as finally happened.
The first two also saw him running towards him after the initial commotion that Diego himself had created at the site of the first beating. There he began to hit him, and there he concentrated the mob that then chased him with kicks and punches along the promenade until he collapsed in the middle of the street.
Argument between two accused in the booth of a pub
Diego was also identified by one of the members of the pub’s security team. where the gang of the accused had started their party on the night of July 2-3, 2021. She said she saw him arguing with Catherine Silvathen his girlfriend and who also sits in the dock accused of murder with cruelty, treachery and discrimination based on sexual orientation.
Both were in the reserved area of the venue that the group of friends had rented to celebrate the opening of nightlife after confinement. When Diego slammed his hand on the table in the booth in front of Catherine, the guard urged them to argue outside, where he escorted them. “The girl was angry and seemed very offended and upset. when I told them to please come out and fix it,” he said.
The session was also not positive for Catherine’s interests. Until now only the prosecution witnesses had located her in an aggressive attitude and as part of the pack that killed Samuel, which he would have cheered by uttering homophobic insults and pushing those who were trying to stop the beating and rescue the boy. The prosecution today again refuted with witness evidence the thesis of her defense, which presents her as “a peaceful girl” who neither participated nor encouraged the events and who even tried to stop Diego, by word of mouth and even by confronting him.
On the contrary, one of the witnesses admitted that although he first saw her trying to grab her boyfriend, he later observed her integrated into the group that chased Samuel on the run along the seafront. Another of the witnesses denied having seen her stopping Diego, something that, she said, only Samuel’s friend did, the only one who asked for help: “Help me, please, they’re beating him for being gay!”. Although the accusations ask Catherine for 25 years in prison, the same sentence as for Diego, she is free under precautionary measures, while her ex-boyfriend remains in provisional prison.
His defense, which is exercised by the criminal Luciano Prado del Ríohas also appealed to the newscast penalty and the threats and insults that Catherine has received since she was implicated in the crime. Luciano Prado is the brother of Paula Prado del Ríogeneral secretary of the Popular Party of Galicia, whom some journalists from Televisión de Galicia place behind the orders they have received to not to take close-up images of the alleged murderers, and to blur or pixelate their faces before broadcasting them. Public He has asked the PP and the management of public television about these orders, but none of them have responded.
When they finished with Samuel, the boy I was bleeding from the occiput, mouth and ears. He was lying unconscious on the ground. A health police officer who was walking around the place, and who told him this on the stand, gave him first aid through mouth-to-mouth and cardiac massage. He was then taken by ambulance to the hospital where died a few hours later.
Since then, Samuel’s name, origin, life and circumstances, including the sexual orientation that his murderers thought they saw in himhas not stopped being disseminated through all the media, without anyone questioning the appropriateness of doing so despite the revictimization that continues to torment his family.
Meanwhile, defense lawyers They continue to believe that those affected the dissemination of images of the people who participate in the process is their clients. Not only because it would have been set up a parallel trial in which his guilt would have already been ruled, but because public knowledge of his image conditions the versions of the witnesses, especially those who did not know either the victim or the accused.
All of them have come to testify and have been identified as perpetrators of the crime. The defense asks them if they were not confused, insinuating to the jury that they could have been carried away by the parallel trial derived from the dissemination of their names and faces. Tried without success Diego Montaña’s lawyer with one of the witnesses who had not identified his client three years ago to the police:
—Are you sure it was Diego? How come you recognize it today?
—It’s the memory I have now.
—But I didn’t know his name, and Samuel did.
—Everyone knows who Samuel is.
#stab #heart #lose #witnesses #point #main #accused #murdering #Samuel
