The Sixth Section of the Provincial Court of Las Palmas has suspended the trial scheduled for this Monday against the seven defendants accused of assaulting the house in La Florida (San Bartolomé) of José Antonio Perera.
The reason for the suspension is that one of the defendants has requested to change lawyers "because he does not feel well represented by the current one."
The defendant Néstor, who until this Monday shared a lawyer with another of the accused, has requested before Judge Emilio Moya to change his defense. "I want a lawyer who only defends my interests," he added.
Until April of last year, he had been represented by another lawyer, but after the death of that lawyer, this colleague assumed his representation. Néstor, during his intervention in the Chamber, requested to change his defense. "I realized two or three weeks ago that I wanted another lawyer," he said, but did not convey it to his representative until the beginning of September.
At that time, the judge asked the other six defendants to state whether they wanted to choose a new lawyer to avoid future postponements for the same reason. Another of the accused, José Miguel, also requested a new public defender.
Background
The case judges seven people, accused of the crimes of attempted murder, robbery with violence in an inhabited house, and possession of prohibited weapons.
In addition, four of the accused are already in prison for the murder of a man in Argana in March 2015.
The events date back to 8:30 in the morning of January 18, 2016. According to the prosecution's indictment, the seven defendants allegedly posed as members of the State Security Forces and Corps and entered a house in San Bartolomé, with its two owners inside.
At the moment they entered the house, they tied the hands of both owners and began to ask them where the safe was. To harass the owner of the house, a well-known carpenter in the municipality, they would have begun to "hit him all over the body and apply electric shocks," according to the Public Prosecutor's Office.
As a result, they "caused various injuries to one of the residents," which caused "a high vital risk." Two months later and during the recovery period, the man died of a pulmonary thromboembolism.
As revealed by the forensic medical report, this thrombus evolved between 25 and 60 days before, according to the Public Prosecutor's Office, in the period between the assault and the immobilization of the victim due to the injuries.