The Annual Report of the Canary Islands Prosecutor's Office, which was presented this Monday by the senior prosecutor Vicente Garrido, dedicates a special chapter to "crimes of torture and against moral integrity committed by an authority or public official." And within that chapter, which points out that these behaviors are "clearly in the minority" in the islands, the only case that is expressly cited is the one that occurred in Lanzarote four years ago, and which is still pending trial today.
The investigation ended almost two years ago and the Prosecutor's Office even filed the indictment in March 2013, although a date has not yet been set for the oral hearing. In this case, six members of the National Police Force in Arrecife will be in the dock, accused of two crimes of torture, in its form of serious attack on moral integrity, in conjunction with two crimes of injury.
In its annual report, the Prosecutor's Office recalls that the events occurred on April 28, 2010 in the premises of the Arrecife National Police Corps Police Station and "consisted of aggressions against two brothers who were detained in the aforementioned facilities, as retaliation for the prior conduct of these, which was also the subject of accusation for crimes of assault and injury" against the agents.
"At the time of preparing this Report, we are awaiting the holding of this trial," reiterates the Prosecutor's Office, which had already included this case in previous annual reports. As La Voz published a year and a half ago, the prosecutor in the case, Yolanda López, is asking for between 12 and 15 years in prison for the six police officers, one of them a sub-inspector. In addition, she demands that they compensate the two young men with more than 28,000 euros for the injuries they suffered and for the after-effects.
An "anecdotal" behavior in the Canary Islands
The Canary Islands Prosecutor's Office, when presenting this "issue of mandatory treatment" in its annual report, emphasizes that "the initiation of judicial proceedings for this kind of conduct (clearly in the minority) is more apparent than real, since of the 6 preliminary proceedings initiated in 2013 (5 in 2012)" in the province of Las Palmas, "only one of them will reach the oral trial phase."
According to her, "this may be due to various factors, including defects in the registration of the matter, redirection to other criminal figures or lack of sufficient probative material to prove the reported conduct, which, we insist, can be considered as anecdotal in this territory." In addition, she adds that in the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife "no proceedings have been initiated on this type of crime."
However, in Lanzarote it is not the first time that similar events have gone to trial. In 2007, two National Police officers were sentenced to eight years and six months in prison for crimes against moral integrity, illegal detention and falsehood in an official document, in addition to a misdemeanor of injury. In addition, years before another agent was sentenced to three years in prison and ten years of disqualification for a crime of illegal detention and a misdemeanor of injury.
