One of the nine detained by the National Police for allegedly kidnapping two men in Madrid is one of those convicted of the rape and murder of Sandra Palo in Leganés in 2003. This is Ramón Santiago Jiménez, who at the time of the crime was 16 years old and was released in 2011 after serving the eight years of closed confinement to which he was sentenced, police sources have informed EFE.
The detainees summoned their victims on January 17 to buy and sell a second-hand vehicle and threatened them with a firearm so that they would hand over the money and get into the car, with which they fled to an abandoned and occupied building. There they were held captive for two days, during which they tried to charge their relatives a financial amount for their release, until agents from the Special Operations Group (GEO) of the National Police intervened. A payment was made, which was later recovered by the agents; and they asked for a second without success.
After several communications between the kidnappers and the victims’ family to try to reach an economic agreement for the release of those held captive, on January 19, a device was established for the release of the victims and the arrest of those involved in the kidnapping. , where nine people were arrested as alleged perpetrators of the kidnapping, among whom was Ramón Santiago. Apart from him, two other people have also been remanded in provisional detention.
Santiago was sentenced to 17 years in prison – of which he only served 9 – when on May 17, 2003, along with two other minors and an 18-year-old young man, they put Sandra Palo, 22 years old and with a mental handicap, when waiting for the bus with a friend. They drove to a vacant lot on the Toledo highway, where they raped her, ran over her repeatedly and set her on fire. At that time, among the 4 detainees there were more than 700 complaints for acts of vandalism and theft.
The case of Sandra Palo shocked Spain and sparked debate about penalties for minor offenders in our country. The relevance of the event was so great that one million signatures were collected to request the toughening of sentences for minors with a reform of the Juvenile Law. Of those detained, only one was of legal age: the others were tried under juvenile laws.
The arrest of Ramón Santiago clashes head-on with the image he showed just two years ago in an interview given to ‘Viva la vida’, where he was deeply sorry for the events that occurred in 2003, declaring that he would shoot himself “three shots in the head before to do something like that again.” Focused on his musical career, the detainee stated that he became interested in music in the juvenile center, where he was held from detention until 2009, when he was transferred to a regular penitentiary center until 2012.
