He supreme court has confirmed the conviction of three months in prison to a corporal of the Army for throwing himself into sleep on guard in a Ceuta powder keg with a soldier, because “they were bored”. The Military Chamber of the Supreme Court has handed down a ruling that rejects the corporal’s appeal against the resolution of the Second Territorial Military Court of Seville that sentenced him for a crime of breach of service.
The events occurred shortly after midnight on February 19, 2021 when a lieutenant went to carry out the weekly inspection at the Otero de Ceuta Barracks and asked to notify them of their arrival at the Polvorín Hacho-Obispo guardhouse where they were on security duty. the corporal and a soldier.
But it was impossible despite spending more than half an hour calling the military telephones located in the Guard Corps, so he decided to return to the barracks to get the keys to the facility, where he returned at around 01:15.
Upon entering the building, he found that in the unit where the security guard is carried out “there was no one”that the lights were out and that the corporal and the soldier were “lying on the bunk beds and fast asleep”.
Disoriented and poorly uniformed
After about five minutes, the corporal got out of bed “totally disoriented, poorly uniformed, not carrying weapons” and doing the same a minute later the soldier, who had been authorized by the corporal to lie down to rest, a faculty that according to all the witnesses was foreseen during that 24-hour service, for which he was acquitted.
In his appeal, the corporal denied that he acted with the intention of leaving the service and that he went to bed freely and voluntarily with the intention of sleeping, thinking that his action was going to go unpunished.
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But the Court recalls that the convicted person himself acknowledged having been “transposed” and when the prosecutor asked him if he thought that by lying on the bed he could neglect the service and fall asleep, he replied: “yes, well, but I don’t know.”
In addition, the intention to neglect the service is supported by the fact of having the light off, placing the telephone on a chair, outside the room, lying on the bottom bunk or removing the trench coats.