The Hate Crimes Prosecutor asks for two years in prison for a Real Club Deportivo Espanyol fan accused of uttering racist insults to humiliate and belittle Athletic Club de Bilbao striker Iñaki Williams in a League match at the Cornellà-El stadium Prat in January 2020.
In his brief of provisional conclusions, the prosecutor attributes to the defendant, K.G.B., a crime against fundamental rights and public liberties, in its modality of injuring the dignity of people for racist reasons and against moral integrity, for which he also He asks for a fine of 5,475 euros and that during the five years after the prison sentence he cannot enter any football stadium or teach sports and free time.
This racist incident occurred on January 25, 2020, during a League match between Espanyol and Athletic Club in Cornellà-El Prat, when between 2:26 p.m. and 2:28 p.m. Iñaki Williams, a black player from the visiting team, was substituted and received boos and “manifestations of contempt”, such as simulating the gestures of primates and repeated shouts “uh, uh, uh, uh”, an onomatopoeia that imitates the sound made by monkeys, the letter says.
The boos came from a part of the blue and white stadium located in sector 108 of the stands, where K.G.B., of Spanish nationality, was, who “personally, among many”, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, acted “acting with evident contempt for the black color of the player’s skin.
In this way, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, the defendant shouted and staged “racist gestures of contempt” against Williams, generating “feelings of frustration, shame, and humiliation” in the footballer, with the consequent undermining of his dignity.
In his brief, the prosecutor for hate crimes in Barcelona, ??Miguel Ángel Aguilar, maintains that these sounds imitating monkeys, as is “public and notorious”, have been made on several occasions by groups of fans from different countries “to offend black soccer players publicly during the course of a soccer game”.
In March of last year, Williams assured the judge, in his videoconference statement during the investigation phase, that he felt “humiliated” by the racist insults and that he is outraged that acts of this nature continue to occur in the 21st century.
In fact, the prosecutor emphasizes that the racist insults occurred before the 27,318 attendees who had come to the blue and white stadium and before a television audience estimated at almost 210,000 spectators, in addition to a “massive” number of listeners who could hear them on the radio.
In its brief, the Prosecutor’s Office requests that the case be archived for the second defendant for these racist chants, since in his case during the investigation sufficient evidence of criminality on his part has not been obtained.
The case was opened as a result of a pioneering complaint from the Barcelona Hate Crimes Prosecutor’s Office for racist insults in the stands of a football match, after a complaint filed with the public ministry by the National Football League, which appeared as an accusation.
The Prosecutor’s Office commissioned an investigation by the Mossos d’Esquadra, who managed to identify the alleged perpetrators of the insults after examining the images from the security cameras and thanks to the information provided by RCD Espanyol on the owners of the towns from which they came. the screams.
The police investigations allowed the identification of three followers allegedly related to the racist insults, one of them a minor. Finally, of the two adults, the Prosecutor’s Office has only ended up accusing one of them, due to the lack of evidence on the second.
