The first time Abderrazak Mounib called me collect from prison was at the end of 1996. I didn’t believe him. He said that he and another Moroccan, Ahmed Toummouhi, had been imprisoned for five years for rapes they did not commit. The victims identified them without any doubt and the Supreme Court confirmed the sentences. “Innocent? Ha!”, I thought, fatuous, inexperienced and incredulous.
But Abderrazak, whom he would end up calling brother, only had one thing: time. He phoned me so many times and with such insistence that I ended up thinking that if even a small part of what he said was true, it would be a scandal for the Spanish justice system. When I finally started doing my job and got my ass out of the chair, I visited his wife, Fatima, who was 48 years old at the time and had four children, two girls and two boys between the ages of 8 and 18.
“The Civil Guard knows that they are innocent,” Fátima said in broken Spanish. The Civil Guard, the police force that arrested the defendants, does not usually back down. For this reason, my prejudices took an unexpected turn when I discovered the report that the 411 Command delivered to the Prosecutor’s Office of the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia. The document confirmed, in effect, his innocence.
Before that investigation, the Civil Guard was about to arrest them again, but could not: they were already detained. Years after their entry into prison, there was another wave of violations similar to the one they were accused of. In fact, the victims re-identified them in the photo albums of sex offenders. The first thing the investigators thought is that they took advantage of a permit to reoffend.
But in prison they discovered that they had not been on leave for even one day and that they would not do so for a long time, given the seriousness of the sentences. Something didn’t add up, but the mystery was about to be cleared up. The Civil Guard, which located a stolen vehicle used by the perpetrators of the second wave of violations, set up a troncha (a surveillance) and arrested Antonio García Carbonell when he was going to use the car.
three surprises. The first: this Spaniard looked like Ahmed Toummouhi’s twin. The second: objects belonging to the victims and the weapons with which he intimidated them did appear in his house, among other incriminating evidence that was never found in the Moroccans’ homes. The third: Mounib and Toummouhi were sentenced without DNA analysis because of their alleged attacks only a handkerchief with semen was preserved and at the time it could not be analyzed…
But what was impossible when they were condemned was possible when Antonio García Carbonell fell. The DNA of the handkerchief indicated him as a co-perpetrator of one of the attacks attributed to the Moroccans. That sentence was annulled, but the innocent remained in prison for other reasons that could not be reviewed because there were no handkerchiefs or anything similar here. It’s called justice.
It was useless for the Prosecutor’s Office to request pardon and admit “serious doubts in conscience” about his guilt. The Civil Guard exonerated them in a report of overwhelming forcefulness. The document indicated that the only proof against the defendants was the identification of the victims, but it was possible that those same acknowledgments were flawed.
As we have seen, one of the defendants looked a lot like Antonio García Carbonell, who was convicted with irrefutable evidence. And remember this fact: the photo of the other innocent, that of Abderrazak Mounib, was published in two newspapers on the days of his arrest. That could influence the victims. Did they really identify him as his rapist or as the man in the diary?
The best example of how memory plays tricks is the case of the handkerchief: although the DNA categorically exonerated the Moroccans, the victim of that attack continued to insist long after that it was them. They also said that they were the victims of the second wave of attacks, when it was materially impossible because they were already in prison. Yes, prisoners, inevitably prisoners. Prisoners, prisoners, prisoners.
Abderrazak Mounib, the inmate of Brians cell 127, died of a heart attack on April 30, 2000. Ahmed Toummouhi remained in jail until 2006, when he served two-thirds of his sentence and was released. The rapist Antonio García Carbonell also took to the streets in 2013. In 2015, he was arrested again, together with an accomplice. This time for a crime.
Incredible as it may seem, everything narrated conforms to the law: the conviction of two innocent men, the impossibility of reviewing their sentences, even though even the public prosecutor considered them unjust, and the release of someone as dangerous as Antonio García Carbonell.
Okay, everything was legal. And legit? Decent? Fair? One day, when I finally trusted him, I asked him why he chose precisely me for his calls. So I knew. “You do not remember? You were one of the journalists who published my photo.” Every time I remember that answer from my friend Abderrazak Mounib, the backpack that I carry in this job becomes heavier and heavier.
This report updates the version that was published on the Comer channel on Friday, December 10, 2021
