Three Valencia fans have been sentenced this Monday to eight months in prison for a crime against moral integrity with aggravated hatred for the racist insults uttered during a match on May 21, 2023 at the Mestalla field to the Real Madrid player Vinicius Jr. The three have also signed, at the request of Real Madrid, a letter in which they apologize to the player, to the club itself and to “all those who may feel offended” by the insults. In addition to the prison sentence, which will not be carried out as long as the three young people do not commit crimes in the next three years, the sentence prohibits them from accessing football stadiums that host League and/or Spanish Football Federation matches for two years. . “Do you accept your responsibility?” the judge asked the three accused in the hearing held in the City of Justice of Valencia, which barely lasted a few minutes.
LaLiga has celebrated, through a statement, the judicial decision, which has been reached after an agreement between the accusations (in addition to the player and Madrid, the league and the federation came forward) and the defenses of the Valencian fans, and He highlighted that it is “the first conviction for racist insults in a football stadium in Spain.”
The events happened a year ago, when in a confrontation between Valencia and Real Madrid, Vinicius reported having received racist insults from fans located in the Animation Stand. The match was stopped, starting in the 72nd minute, when the player identified one of the accused and, after LaLiga reported that same night, two others were identified with Valencia’s internal cameras.
In the match during which the events occurred, Vinicius was about to enter the area with the ball when a rival player, Cömert, kicked another that had been thrown from the stands, and disrupted the play with a billiard carom.
The ruling indicates that the three defendants rebuked Vinicius with shouts, gestures and chants in which they referred to his “skin color, acting with obvious contempt for the black color of the player’s skin,” according to the resolution. These “racist” shouts and gestures, consisting among other things of repeating the sounds “uh, uh uh” and imitating the movements of monkeys, caused the footballer “feelings of frustration, shame and humiliation, with the consequent impairment of their intrinsic dignity,” the sentence details.
These actions took place with the football stadium full and before a “massive television, radio and media audience”, which is why they generated in parallel “a great controversy” that same day and the following “with a great impact and impact on social networks,” adds the ruling. The Brazilian located someone in the background who was insulting him and began to point at him, seeking the referee’s assistance.
“This is the first conviction of this type that has been handed down in Spain, as a result of LaLiga’s complaint before the courts, and which was joined by the Royal Spanish Football Federation, Real Madrid and, in recent weeks, the own player,” LaLiga highlighted in its statement.
The defenses of the accused have highlighted the fact that the insults have been contextualized and dimensioned and that they have not been judged as a hate crime “because it is not”, and have remained an accusation against moral integrity with a aggravating circumstance of hatred that, in reality, does not aggravate the penalty, since it is offset by the mitigating circumstance of confession. “What happened happened in a context in which there were 45,000 people and we are talking about three,” said one of the lawyers.
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