“I want my honor back. They took it from my face.” Ahmed Toummouhi has been sailing for the last few years like a dark whirlwind to nowhere. In 1991 he was charged with a savage string of rapes committed by another man, he was put behind bars for 15 years and in 2006 he was released after serving three quarters of his sentence. The Civil Guard and the Prosecutor’s Office, which unsuccessfully requested his release, were convinced of his innocence almost from the beginning. But the Supreme Court did not give his arm to twist until today.
The Criminal Chamber has annulled the judgment of the Court of Barcelona, of September 1992, which sentenced Ahmed -Berber from Nador, 72 years old, three children and six grandchildren- for two crimes of rape and two offenses of injury to a total of 24 years in prison. The high court has upheld the appeal for review against the final sentence, which focused on new evidence such as expert reports on the semen found in an intimate garment of one of the assaulted women, and which does not correspond to the markers of the recurrent.
These reports, as stated by the defendant in his appeal, were made in 1992 by the Scientific Police of Barcelona but were never brought to the attention of the court, despite being an admitted piece of evidence that was part of the procedure, given that the experts did not come to testify in the oral hearing and the Court of Barcelona did not suspend the trial for its summons. Triple error: the Police, the experts and the court itself, guarantor of the procedure.
Already in 2015, when he was interviewed by this newspaper, Ahmed was far from mastering Spanish to speak with double meanings. But a fatal mistake has cost him 15 years in jail. The innocent convict is a carbon copy of Antonio García Carbonell, a multiple rapist, the first common prisoner released after the annulment of the Parot doctrine in October 2013. He has just been put down again for allegedly beating an old woman to death in Girona, just four months after his release.
The Civil Guard was convinced, and tried to confirm it, that it was García Carbonell and not Toummouhi who, along with a never-explained buddy, assaulted couples in lonely corners of Barcelona, Tarragona and Girona to rape women with extreme violence. . But it could only be proven in one case, thanks to a DNA test.
“If García Carbonell spoke, confessed, I would recover my honor and I could return to Morocco,” Ahmed commented eight years ago.
Is honor so important not to see your wife in 24 years?
“It’s everything. My wife knows the truth, but the neighbors… There are people who can look bad. It’s very, very, difficult to go back there without a piece of paper saying I’m clean. I’m not going to drown or crack my head, but I feel like I have nothing left. I don’t even have papers. Only the doctor’s card and a paper that says that I am registered in Martorell », she recounted then.
flawed evidence
Ahmed lived there with his brother Omar, although he continually went to the house of his son Khalid, 36 years old and three children, on the outskirts of Vilafranca del Penedès. He spends hours sitting on the carpet in his dining room, tends a garden, eats potatoes and tomatoes, walks, prays. «They will never recognize his innocence. But at least they give him papers so he can move freely. I only talk to my mother in case of illness… it’s complicated, “Khalid confessed in his day.
Ahmed ended up in Catalonia in 1988, after surviving four years in France as a collector and bricklayer. In Nador, his wife and three children were waiting for his money. “But that autumn of 1991 the tap suddenly turned off and I had to stop studying.” At the age of 11, Khalid was the man of the house, he had to work. His father had become a monster in the eyes of Justice who beat and raped children, some minors, in the presence of his boyfriends.
The Civil Guard had a robot portrait and Ahmed’s broad features, his jail face, his inward-looking eyes, bore an amazing resemblance to those of the real culprit. Illiterate, with very basic notions of Spanish, they handcuffed him when he entered his Barcelona pension that afternoon in November 1991. The next day, a compatriot of his, Abderrazak Mounib, a street vendor he did not even know, was arrested. The victims pointed them out, both of them, and the judge believed them. There was no further evidence.
The Civil Guard denounced that the recognition rounds were flawed because before they were held some newspapers published the photo of Abderrazak; because before pointing their finger at them, the victims had seen them handcuffed on the way to court with the look one gets after spending a couple of nights in jail. But three firm sentences fell on them. Despite the fact that the marks that one of the girls had on her body were, supposedly, from Abderrazak’s tooth, and the poor salesman from Fez only had one wisdom tooth left. Despite the fact that in 1995 there were more rapes, identical ones, and the victims again identified Ahmed without any doubt, who had not left his cell for four years.
That year, the investigators finally found Antonio García Carbonell and he was sentenced to more than two centuries. But Ahmed and Abderrazak stayed inside. No one believed they were guilty anymore.
The civil guard Reyes Benítez, a brave and honest man, insisted on proving his innocence. In 1995, he managed to have the semen-stained handkerchief of one of the 1991 victims analyzed. Bingo, it belonged to García Carbonell. But he only got one of the three sentences annulled. Despite the fact that the Prosecutor’s Office admitted “serious doubts of conscience.” Despite the fact that the Generalitat demanded a “quick legal exit”. Despite the fact that the Supreme Court recognized that the “basic element of evidence was dubious identification”, they continued inside. Abderrazak died in his cell in 2000 of a heart attack. And today, at last, 32 years after his arrest, Ahmed finds justice after the Supreme Court has recognized his mistake.
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