The organization understands that the court has not ruled on the alleged responsibility of two of the defendants in the sixteen deaths caused by the attacks
The Association of Victims of Terrorism (AVT) has announced that will ask the National audience repeat the judgment of attacks of August 17, 2017, understanding that the court has not ruled on the alleged responsibility of two defendants in the sixteen deaths caused by the attacks.
The National Court sentenced to terms of 8 and 53 years for the three defendants who sat on the bench for these facts. The highest sentence was for Mohamed Houli, who was injured in the explosion in Alcanar (Tarragona), while Driss Oukabir, who rented the van on Las Ramblas, was sentenced to 46 years.
Among the crimes attributed to them were organization membership terrorist, but the court refused to consider them co-perpetrators of the crimes of attempted murder of a terrorist nature, as requested by some accusations, including the AVT that demanded for them permanent reviewable prison.
By understanding that the sentence could have violated their right to effective judicial protection, the AVT has announced that it will request its annulment and the repetition of the trialgiven that the court has not ruled on the alleged participation of both defendants “in the criminal acts that occurred on the Rambla de Barcelona and on the Cambrils promenade, where 15 people were killed and more than 150 were injured.”
Remember the association that He formulated an accusation for the crimes of consummated and attempted terrorist murder, and requested for the two defendants reviewable permanent imprisonment, although the court understands that it was not part of the object of the proceedings since they had not been previously prosecuted for it by the investigating judge and that the alleged perpetrators died.
“In our opinion, this circumstance should not bind the prosecution body that must hold the oral trial with respect to all the facts,” stresses the association, which recalls that the order to open the oral trial “cannot limit the legal qualifications raised by the accusations”.
They further understand that Although the investigating judge did not prosecute them for the homicides, the Criminal Chamber, when resolving the appeals, endorsed the decision to prosecutealthough he left the door open to the accusations to direct his action also for those crimes.
For this reason and considering that the court “has only judged part of the facts investigated” despite the fact that the accusations made an accusation “for all the events that occurred on August 17, 2017 in Barcelona and Cambrills”, the AVT will request the annulment of the sentence, which also sentenced a third defendant, Said Ben Iazza, to 8 years in prison for a crime of collaboration with a terrorist organization for having lent his documentation and a van to buy and transport explosive devices.
After hearing the verdict, The Prosecutor’s Office justified that it has not been possible to prove that the only three convicted survivors had knowledge that the deaths in Las Ramblas and Cambrils were going to take place and therefore it has not been possible to attribute responsibility in the 16 homicides that were committed, as claimed by associations such as the AVT.