The courts have rejected the last resort of the Madrid City Council and have confirmed the acquittal of two people accused of assaulting police and burning containers in the 2018 disturbances in Lavapiés after the death of Senegalés Mame Mbaye. The Provincial Court of the Capital confirms that the declaration of the riots that claimed to have seen them embozados with Palestinian scarves and caps are not enough to impose a prison sentence. Two other young people already accepted in 2021 a year in prison after recognizing their role in these disturbances and, among other things, having hit a policeman with a cobblestone.
Dozens of people concentrated in the Madrid neighborhood of Lavapiés a few hours after Mbaye’s death. The young Senegalese who collapsed in the street of the bear later more than a kilometer of flight to the Municipal Police race from the Plaza Mayor where he was selling perfumes along with other manteros. The investigation revealed that the deceased had a “structural cardiac pathology” that caused his death and neighbors and anti -racist groups threw themselves into the street to protest against a police persecution that, they understood, had triggered the death of the mantero.
The riots succeeded for several days in various areas of the neighborhood with police loads, launching and burning containers, with five detained people who were released shortly after. A first judicial process against two young people ended with a conformity: both accepted two -year prison sentences after recognizing that they participated in “numerous incidents”, The burning of containers or the damage in a parking meter and several bank branches of Argumosa street. One assaulted a policeman with one cobblestone and the other to a second agent with several swipes.
A second judicial procedure went against a man and a woman to whom several agents had identified as part of the group that starred in the disturbances. The Prosecutor’s Office accused them under the statement of having been recognized “hiding their faces” on Santa Isabel Street with a hat and a Palestinian. The police even affirmed that the man had assaulted them when they had tried to identify reaching injuries in one of the riot.
A criminal court on Julián Camarillo Street chose to acquit both in a decision that has just been ratified by the Provincial Court of Madrid. The police statement, explain the magistrates, “was not estimated enough to base a condemnatory pronouncement.” The appeal that sought his sentence in the second instance was from the Madrid City Council, who complained that the court had taken into account the statements of other witnesses above those of the riot agents. Throughout the process the judges have questioned the active legitimation of the Consistory to accuse the two of “a crime of attack against a national police.”
The Prosecutor’s Office went from accusing the two to challenge the appeal of the session directed by José Luis Martínez-Almeida, who has finally gave up and has not taken this acquittal to the Supreme Court. The Criminal Court, after the process had to repeat itself after a claim claim, made it clear that the testimony of the national police was not enough: “There are data or indications that doubt the identification made by the police” , said first sentence now confirmed.
That first resolution reveals, says “the weak identification” since the “dark garments” by which they were identified “are used by the vast majority of young people.” In those “high voltage, nervous and chaos” situations, the court acknowledged, “it is possible and admissible that there was a mistake by the agents.”
The sentences of the case have given more credibility to the version of the two defendants and acquitted: they were walking through the neighborhood helping a person to look for a dog that had been lost. This was ratified by the owner of the dog and also several witnesses who went with them, in addition to a journalist who witnessed the altercation. “One of the police insulted me calling me fucking fucking fucking,” said one of the defendants. The police gave a different version: they told him that he was going to be arrested and then “tried to flee and gave a kick and a header to the head of the operation.”
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