Juan Gonzalo Ospina, lawyer representing the tenant of the house on Lagasca Street Madrid in which Six police officers kicked in the door to break up the party those celebrated in the pandemic denounced their existence.”privilegesFor the agents in the judicial process that started this week, ” Madrid Provincial Court.
At this Tuesday’s session, where the parties presented their first arguments before the popular jury, the defense, through one of the lawyers, Juan Antonio Frago, stated that two of the participants of the party held in March 2021 came from well-known families, and this magnified the incident.
“Agents arrived the day before to guard the Ice Palace, where many bodies were found, but we will not hide behind how the context of the pandemic affected them, they would have acted the same way in a normal situation,” he argued.
But as Ospina reported to this newspaper, the process is as follows:decompensated” because of the nature of the people’s jury, therefore Prosecutor’s Office By all accounts, three-quarters of the objections filed Monday were by those who wanted them not to be convicted of the break-in charge, even as the agents sought their acquittal. This, he says, could provide grounds for canceling the oral hearing.
Additionally, Ospina said on the second day of the hearing that the agents They asked not to be videotaped during the session and the judge was willing to accept it. “There can be no such privilege,” the lawyer decried in the corridors of the District Court.
They broke the door with a battering ram
Agents, five men and one woman, They broke the door of the house with a battering ram In the early hours of March 21, 2021, with coronavirus restrictions still in place, a party was taking place. For this reason, the prosecutor’s office raised the question of “whether the agents entered because they wanted to enter or because they thought a crime was being committed” at the hearing.
The forced entry occurred after they tried to reason with partygoers, attempted to open the door using the ‘slide’ method and even unscrewed the lock with a screwdriver. The young people warned the agents, saying that there was no court order for them to enter the house, so they had no right to do so. One of the participants even told them that he studied Law and knew the law “better than they did.”
Now, The agents claim they were merely following orders from the current deputy inspector, who maintains he didn’t know what he was ordering was illegal.. This was flatly denied by the special prosecutor’s office, which considered the agents to know the law very well due to their training as police officers: “We are talking about people who have studied the Criminal Code and the Spanish Constitution and come with a battering ram in the time of “Covid at home”.
In the second session of the hearing held on Tuesday Defense and prosecution minutes were read He is before a popular jury of six women and two men who will consider whether the crime of trespassing for which the police is accused took place.
Therefore special blame sought two years and six months imprisonment and disqualification for each of the six agentsThe prosecutor’s office requests the acquittal of five subordinates and the assistant inspector on duty, who did not know that breaking the door of a house with a battering ram was against the law, on the grounds that they obeyed orders. “We are not asking for help from the prosecutor’s office, the agents were convinced that what they were doing was right,” Frago said.
“Come out! Introduce yourself!”
The events took place on March 21, 2021. Police began evacuating a house in central Madrid, under full restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic where the party is held. The six agents involved in the incident, who were recently summoned to the Madrid Regional Court for the crime of breaking and entering, began to verbally warn the young people inside before breaking down the door.
Previous complaints from neighbors had stated that the party was held in a tourist apartment and that they organized there regularly, with “15 or 20 searches” required in the previous days before the police decided to take action.
According to the camera records carried by the agents, They tried to warn the young people in the apartment on Lagasca Street in the center of Madrid in both English and Spanish.but they received no response.
“They open the door and introduce themselves, the people inside come out, we report it, and they leave. But if they don’t open the door, we already told them so. the crime of serious disobedience to law enforcement. We don’t know how to inform them, they are in a tourist apartment, this is not a home, okay? So if they are violating Covid measures, they have no right to be there. Go out, introduce yourself! “And obey the rules, otherwise they will commit serious disobedience that will cause us to arrest them and force our way in, handle the situation,” was the first inspector in charge of the operation to threaten. He ordered to remove the lock and finally try to open the door using the ‘sliding’ method using the battering ram.