His name was Antonio Augusto Fonseca. He was 32 years old and was from Guinea Bissau. He died in the early morning of May 20, 2000 at the National Police station in Arrecife, shortly after being arrested for alleged drug possession. According to the dismissal order issued by Court number 1 of Arrecife, he died of natural causes, but his death put the National Police station under suspicion for a while.
The sister of the deceased then exhibited several photographs as proof of her complaint against the police, whom she accused of having given the deceased a fatal beating, which led to the opening of the pertinent proceedings to determine what happened.
A total of three forensic doctors appeared then in the Court, showing contradictory positions. The judge ended up accepting the testimonies of two of the three medical experts who intervened in the case, Casimiro Robayna and María José Meilá, who pointed out that no blow could have caused his death. Thus, he dismissed the statements made by the forensic doctor José Antonio García Andrade, hired by the family of the deceased, who maintained that the cause of the immigrant's death was due to a strong blow to the neck for considering his statements "unprofessional and exhaustive".
The judicial order also referred to the statements of Juan José Hormiga, a witness presented by Fonseca's family who had been arrested that night for robbing a bar in the town of Tías, who assured at the time that he had witnessed from his cell how the two policemen were beating Fonseca. However, the judge accepted the statements of a defense witness who placed Hormiga's arrest hours after Fonseca's death occurred.
The Fonseca case, which had national repercussions, shocked the people of Lanzarote, to the point that numerous mobilizations took place on the island, by different groups.
