The lieutenant prosecutor of the Supreme Court, María de los Ángeles Sánchez Conde, has opened investigations into the leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, for the statements to the newspaper Clarín, from Buenos Aires (Argentina), in which he assured that “there will be a moment when the people will want to hang [the president of the central government] by the feet”.
In this way, he accepts the complaint presented by the PSOE, in which it is warned that the ultra-nationalist leader was able to commit “repeated incitement to hatred” incurring crimes of insults, slander and serious threats to the Spanish Government and other institutions of the State. The prosecutor relates these statements to the demonstrations on Carrer Ferraz.
In the decree initiating investigative proceedings, the Prosecutor’s Office recalls that the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court requires that for there to be an incitement to hatred there must be “a climate conducive to acts of discrimination”.
In addition, he explains that it is necessary to specify the context of the interview with Clarín to see whether or not the inviolability enjoyed by deputies during demonstrations in the exercise of their functions is presented.
And after that, it will be necessary to analyze whether the facts are punishable in Argentina, for being the place where the interview took place, and whether his words are protected by freedom of expression, “which has very broad in political criticism”.
However, he says that “it is not necessary to disconnect the interview” from the “moment of serious political agitation” in which associations and ideological groups similar to Abascal, such as the youth brand of, “have promoted a lot of violent incidents” against PSOE headquarters. What’s more, he indicates that Abascal has attended these rallies, which “have sometimes ended in violent confrontations with the security forces”, to which the leader of Vox “has asked them not to obey his commands”.
