The Supreme Court has reduced the sentence from three years and six months in prison to one year and four months for the young Moroccan who instigated a riot on the night of February 8, 2021, in an apartment complex in Gran Canaria, intended to house unaccompanied minors who arrived by boat.
The events occurred around 10:30 p.m. when, accompanied by four other minors residing in the center, all of them with chains, sticks, or glass, they managed to be followed in their revolt by twenty other young people and intimidated the rest of those housed in the complex who did not join the riot.
During these events, some of the participants caused damage to all floors of the Puerto Bello complex, located in the tourist town of Puerto Rico, managed by the NGO Respuesta Social and supervised by the Government of the Canary Islands.
In addition, they threw objects and caused the educators to have to hide to avoid being injured while building barricades and throwing soapy water on the floor to prevent access to the center by the agents, to whom they threw full water bottles or small appliances, which did not hit them. It took hours to arrest the convicted person.
The Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Court sentenced him to three years and six months in prison for a crime of public disorder and another of assaulting law enforcement officers, a ruling that was ratified by the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands.
But the Supreme Court upholds his appeal and agrees to reduce the sentence for a technical issue in application of the most favorable law, after a reform of the Penal Code in 2022.
The Chamber says that once they have ruled out the vital danger to the agents, as the court of first instance said, because the objects thrown "at most could have produced is injuring the agents, but certainly not killing them", the correct thing is to frame the facts in article 550 of the Penal Code, whose penalty is imprisonment from three months to three years.
But by application of art. 77 of the Penal Code and when competing with the crime of public disorder, it is appropriate to impose the minimum penalty in its upper half, of one year, four months and fifteen days.
