The Supreme Court has sentenced a demonstrator who participated in the protests against the sentence of the process in Madrid to four years in prison. The convicted man is accused of injuring an agent during the riots that occurred on October 16, 2019.
The magistrates have slightly reduced the sentence of four and a half years that the Provincial Court of Madrid imposed on Daniel G.H., who spent just over a year in provisional prison, for a crime of attacking agents of the authority in ideal competition with another of injuries and another of public disorder.
The Supreme Court has considered that both he and another defendant, on whom a sentence of six months in prison has fallen, should have been sentenced for the basic type of public disorder and not the aggravated one.
However, the high court maintains the conviction of the defendant for attacking law enforcement officers and injuries accredited in the judgment of the Provincial Court, which was essentially confirmed by the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid.
For these events, a third defendant, Mariano Javier H.J., was also sentenced to pay a fine of 900 euros for resisting law enforcement officers, whose case has not been reviewed by the Supreme Court as it has not appealed.
The three denied in the trial that they attacked police officers during the riots that occurred after that rally against the sentences imposed on the Catalan independence leaders for the process, although the Court considered it proven that Daniel G.H. “suddenly and violently struck from behind” an officer on the head with a wooden stick with “six nails through it.”
For the Supreme Court, the fact that the injury caused “has been slight, does not prevent aggravation”, since it entailed “sufficient danger” to cause “serious damage to health.”
The magistrates consider that “to affirm that it was not dangerous because the part hit was the head and he was wearing a special protection helmet (despite which the nails left marks on the helmet, although without going so far as to pierce it), would be the same as asserting that Shooting an agent who was wearing a bulletproof vest is not dangerous because he shot himself in the chest”.
And in relation to the crime of public disorder, they emphasize that all the elements are present for a conviction for it: group action, with violence, both in front of things and in front of people, “with an impediment to the ordinary enjoyment of public space ( barricades, in addition to acts of violence)â€
