The First Section of the Provincial Court of Las Palmas postponed this Tuesday until next September 21 the trial of six national police officers from the Arrecife police station accused of torturing and injuring two detainees. According to La Provincia, sources in the case have reported that the reason for the suspension of the hearing is that one of the lawyers of the police officers requested that five of the witnesses who were going to testify by videoconference do so in person in the courtroom, since they could thus view the recording of the police station cameras that recorded the aggression and that will be presented at the trial.
The agents are accused of torturing and injuring two men who had been arrested for participating in an aggression in a park in the capital of Lanzarote and for attacking the agents on April 28, 2010. For the police officers, among whom there is a sub-inspector, the penalty requested by the Prosecutor's Office is 15 years in prison for two of them and 12 years in prison for the other four for two crimes of injury and two of torture. As for the two detainees later attacked by the Police, they face a fine for a misdemeanor of injury and two years in prison for a crime of assault against authority.
The detainee was "punished" with "punches and blows"
The events that will be judged next September occurred at approximately 12:30 p.m. on April 28, 2010, when the brothers Y.D.L.M. and N.J.L.M. went to a park located on Alcalde Ginés de la Hoz Street, in Arrecife, and began to hit a third person, Y.E.M. Two National Police officers came to stop the aggression. However, the two men "ignored" their requirements and confronted the agents, giving them "kicks" and "punches," the prosecutor says in his writing. Thus, four other national police officers were needed to reduce them. Also at the time of the arrest, N.J.L.M. "struggled" and "kicked another agent in the mouth."
Once at the police station, the National Police sub-inspector and five other agents led this detainee to the cells. There, while N.J.L.M. was barefoot and handcuffed, "with the evident intention of punishing the detainee for his previous actions," an agent "grabbed him by the neck, making him back up and hitting him in the knee, causing the detainee to fall to the ground," the Prosecutor's Office states.
It was the sub-inspector who then closed "the access door to the cells," and then hit the detainee. According to the Public Prosecutor's writing, he and the other five police officers gave him "several punches in the face and multiple blows to the back and leg, using the regulation defense for this." To heal from the injuries he caused, the young man needed 211 days, "all of them unable to perform his usual profession and leaving him with a slight aesthetic damage as a result."
Subsequently, according to that same indictment, the six accused agents transferred the other detainee, Y.D.L.M., to the cells. "Likewise, as retaliation for his previous actions in the park and with the identical intention of undermining his physical integrity, ignoring his most elementary duties to safeguard the physical integrity of the detainees, finding the detainee handcuffed, they gave him several punches in the face." They also hit him "with the baton on the back and abdomen." His injuries took 30 days to heal and he was hospitalized for one day.
