The Court of Santa Cruz de Tenerife has sentenced four immigrants accused of provoking a riot in the Las Raices camp in La Laguna to one year in prison, for whom the prosecutor had initially requested eleven, although in the trial he lowered their request to between four and seven.
Since the sentences are less than two years, the four defendants, who remained in provisional prison since they were arrested when the events occurred, last April, will be released in the next few hours, as sources have confirmed to Efe. of the defense, as well as that they will appeal the ruling.
The penalties imposed correspond to a crime of public disorder, and one of the defendants, Tariq EM, the Court also convicted him of three minor offenses of injury, punishable by a one-month fine, at a rate of three euros a day.
The three security agents must be compensated with 1,500 euros to one of them and 350 to the other two.
The Hearing considers it proven that Tariq EM “altered order” in the center with a “provocative” attitude towards the camp security guards in the shower area, which turned into a riot.
His performance, the sentence abounds, “is the seed that produced what the others did” three defendants, Youssef S., Mourad N. and El Mellali EM
They “rebuked, cheered, insulted, intimidated, exhibited the odd dangerous instrument such as razor blades, threw objects such as stones, beat, tried to prevent the transfer of the detained inmate to the center’s offices or, at least, they made it enormously difficult, they stood in front of the offices causing a riot ”.
The Hearing emphasizes that although they deny it and the workers of the NGO ACCEM, who manage the Las Raices camp, “sweeten it”, the evidence practiced in the oral hearing shows that they altered public order.
The court dedicates a few lines to censure the “not credible version” that NGO workers offered as witnesses in the trial, since they came to “deny facts that are even admitted by the accused themselves.”
These statements “in their greatest case are inadmissible because they offer a quasi-idyllic image of what happened that afternoon, as some declare characterized by cordiality,” the sentence abounds.
The Court does not consider proven two of the five crimes of injuries that the prosecutor accused Tariq EM, nor one against Mourad N., nor the crime of threats by the latter or Youssef S. and El Mellali EM
The court insufficient the statements of the security guards by not determining with due precision which people surrounded and threatened them, as well as “the very entity of the gestures” that they made, “all of this apart from the impossibility of understanding what they were doing. said people who did not know the Spanish language, “he adds.
“It must be assumed that the defendants’ gestures were produced as part of the altercations, riots and various disorders, and that in any case saying ‘see you on the street without a uniform’ is not a threat as this crime has been modeled by jurisprudence ”, he concludes.
