“This was not a normal fight. It was a brutal beating by three assailants against a young man who could only defend himself with his arms and hands to prevent being stabbed further.” This excerpt comes from the testimony of one of two witnesses in the trial held on Monday at the Provincial Court of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Three young Moroccan men are accused of attempted homicide after repeatedly stabbing another compatriot on the Tenerife tram in August 2024. The victim managed to survive, although the severe scars left by the assailants on his face and neck will remind him of the attack every time he looks in the mirror.

The Public Prosecution requested that each accused be sentenced to ten years in prison. Given that all three defendants are in Spain illegally, they also requested that a portion of their sentence served in prison could be converted into a deportation order. The defence could not contest the assault, nor even argue that their clients were not involved, as a video was presented showing the entire sequence of the attack both inside a tram carriage and outside at the Las Mantecas stop. The clear footage displayed how the assault unfolded and the weapon used around ten o’clock on the 12th of August 2024.

Defence Arguments

However, the three defence lawyers contended that if their clients were found guilty, it should be for causing bodily harm rather than negligent homicide. One lawyer even argued that his client was not involved in the assault like the other two defendants. “He remained at the tram door, although he did participate with punches when the victim managed to exit the tram and was caught at the stop.”

The Motive

The three accused claimed they attacked the victim because he had robbed them in a house they occupy near the Las Mantecas stop a few days earlier. That night, they had been drinking and taking pills and decided to take the tram to La Laguna to buy something for dinner. They insisted that their encounter with the victim was coincidental. One of the accused stated that the victim “was known for his violence” and “always carried knives”. He argued that the victim was the one who brandished a knife, which he could grab, and then he and another accomplice assaulted him while the third stayed by the tram door. He claimed that during the assault, as the victim tried to escape into another carriage, his accomplice took the knife and began to inflict “scratches” on the victim. “I wasn’t stabbing him, I was just scratching him,” he defended.

Nevertheless, one passenger who testified yesterday, having attempted to restrain one of the assailants to prevent further harm to the victim, refuted the accused’s version. He claimed that “one of the assailants pulled out a small knife, like a peeler, while the other two held him.” He stated that he “remembered” identifying the attackers without a doubt at the police station, asserting, “One of them, the most aggressive and wearing glasses, was wielding the knife.”

The identified accused, like the other two who had used an interpreter in the courtroom until now, clearly understood how the witness implicated him as the most violent in the attack and interrupted to deny that he was wearing glasses at that time. The witness retorted that he must have lost them during the fight, but he was certain he had glasses on. The presiding judge of Section Five, Javier Mulero Flores, intervened, ordering the defendant to remain silent and the witness not to confront the accused. It is important to note that, as the accused had previously declared, he “needs glasses” with a high prescription for even close-up vision. He admitted, when questioned by the prosecutor, that he had not been able to see very clearly what occurred during the fight due to considerable eyesight issues.

The victim, currently imprisoned for other offences, testified in handcuffs, as did his assailants. He stated that he only knew the defendants by sight, whom he recognised as the ones who assaulted him last summer. His face was heavily marked by the scars left from the attack, although when asked by a defence lawyer about one of those wounds, he admitted that it was not caused by the defendants but rather by another person he had fought with days before the tram attack.