Lawyer Juan Gonzalo Ospina will appeal the jury’s decision
MADRID, 29 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The popular jury in the trial against two of the National Police agents who entered an apartment on Lagasca Street with a battering ram in 2021 has unanimously exempted the police officers from criminal liability, considering that they did not commit the crime of breaking and entering. when forcibly entering the property in the event of a flagrant crime.
In a public reading, the jury court made public this afternoon the verdict of innocence, with which the court will issue an acquittal sentence for the two agents, including the sub-inspector who was in charge of the police operation.
In this way, the use of a battering ram by the agents to force their way into the apartment where fourteen people in the early hours of March 21, 2021 were holding an illegal party in the middle of the pandemic is supported, violating Covid regulations that It then prevented meetings in homes.
The lawyer Juan Gonzalo Ospina has announced to Europa Press that he will appeal this decision to the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid (TSJM) as he is against it.
The members of the jury consider that the agents acted under the belief that those attending the party were committing a flagrant crime of serious disobedience to authority by refusing to open the door to identify themselves on up to 28 occasions.
The oral hearing began with six police officers in the dock at the request of the private prosecution, carried out by the lawyer Juan Gonzalo Ospina on behalf of the tenant of the home. The prosecutor initially charged them with the crime of breaking and entering in the form of a salable type error, for which she requested their acquittal.
Last week, viewing the recordings led the private prosecution to withdraw the charges against four of the agents, as well as the prosecutor who exonerated the six. After this criminal change, these police officers rose from the bench and will be free of criminal responsibility.
The prosecution maintained the charge against the commanding sub-inspector and another subordinate for the crime of breaking and entering, for which they requested two years and six months in prison and six years of disqualification. Alternatively, he asked for a year and three months in prison for a viable typo error.
The recordings from the cameras worn by two of the agents embedded in their vests have been the main evidence to exonerate the accused. The lawyer for the private prosecution tried, unsuccessfully, to invalidate the images as they were recorded with unofficial cameras.
The videos showed how for half an hour, in which they tried to force the lock, they warned that they were going to force the door down due to the violation of several infractions of the citizen security law, being in breach of Covid regulations and in view of the existence of a flagrant crime.
The young people verbally and rudely confronted the officers and one of them even, already handcuffed and restrained after struggling with a police officer, blurted out: “they don’t know where the hell these guys have gone!” This young woman, who asked for forgiveness at the trial, asked the judge for a ‘habeas corpus’ which was denied when he rejected that an illegal detention had then occurred.
In his turn to have the last word, the head of the operation criticized that the lawyer defending the tenant “confused home inviolability with home impunity.” Furthermore, he stated that if he was found guilty of breaking and entering, he did not want to be a police officer.
“If they believe me guilty, if I am not going to be able to use the legal tools that exist out of fear, that is why I do not want to be a police officer, because I am a police officer to defend citizens,” he said.
His partner and also accused also showed his indignation at being in the dock for doing “just his job” complying with the law, which he did “before, during and after the pandemic.”
Before concluding his intervention, the agent asked himself if “the laws are the same for everyone” and asked if “repeated disobedience to authority is different in the neighborhoods of Salamanca and Carabanchel.”
