The Supreme Court confirms the sentence for the main people convicted of the 17-A attacks

It emphasizes that the victims' right to know the truth has not been violated and reduces the sentence from 8 years to 18 months for Ben Iazza

The Supreme Court has dismissed the appeals filed by the two main defendants for the 2017 jihadist attacks in Catalonia (17-A) and for several accusations against the sentence of the National Court that sentenced Driss Oukabir to 36 years in prison and Mohamed Houli Chemlal to 43 years in prison as perpetrators of the crimes of belonging to a criminal organization with terrorist purposes, manufacturing and possession of explosives and reckless damage and injuries, and Said Ben Iazza as a collaborator in the crime of criminal organization.

The latter, Ben Iazza, has his appeal partially upheld because he considers that it was committed due to serious recklessness, which is why his sentence is reduced from 8 years to 18 months in prison. The court also rules out that the victims' right to know the truth has been violated.

The Chamber, with a presentation by Judge Javier Hernández García, outlines its decision over 347 pages and concludes that it has to reject the accusations' claim to declare the trial null and void, and rules out that their right to exercise the action has been violated. penal.

In fact, the ruling affirms that the parties were able to exercise the control instruments provided for in the procedural law and that the annulment lacks justification, emphasizing that the indictment limited the indictment of those investigated, expressly ruling out that the proceedings carried out yielded sufficient indications of that the accused could have masterminded or participated in the completed and attempted murders committed by other members of the criminal organization.

It thus recalls that the AN, in response to appeals of accusations to order the investigating judge to extend the prosecution for the crimes of terrorist murder, expressly denied that possibility, confirming the conclusion of the summary and, with it, the delimitation of the object of the process in respect of which an accusation could be made. For the Supreme Court, this resolution was sufficiently motivated, and it warns that "no ordinary appeal can be filed" against it.

On the other hand, the Chamber also rules out that the right to the truth invoked by any of the parties was violated in the procedure. "Due to their thoroughness, extension and jurisdictional control from their very beginning, they have complied, without hesitation, with the protection standards derived from Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights where, by logical extension, the invoked right of the victims to the truth," he highlights.

Furthermore, it points out that in contrast to what was claimed by one of the appelling parties, the Chamber discards the conjecture that Abdelbaki Es Satty, the Ripoll imam who died in the Alcanar explosion (Tarragona), is still alive. The Court explains that in this case "the facts declared proven are discredited and it is done (...) based on the idea that the process is an omniscient mechanism, so any shadow of uncertainty can only be interpreted as the product of a deliberate will." of concealment or non-investigation, although, at the same time, it is not identified by whom.

He adds that regarding the "non-finding of the Es Satty telephone among the ruins of the Alcanar house and of some conspiratorial telephone cards about which the party formulates another of its doubts, it must be remembered that due to the explosion the bodies of the occupants of the building were absolutely destroyed, to the point that 14 kilos of human remains of the two deceased people were collected, as recorded in the minutes drawn up. "Which gives an idea of ​​the exceptional intensity of the explosion and its destructive power," he says.

For this reason, the Court says that it is "much more plausible" to consider that the destruction caused prevented the location of the cards and the telephone than to "hypothesize about the manipulation and collusion of all the Mossos d'Esquadra TEDAX agents who heroically put their lives at risk searching for evidence among the remains of the house.

Regarding the fact that his body was not claimed, the Supreme Court embraces the theory of the AN that it could respond to a thousand reasons, including emotional ones, adding that there could also have been an economic reason for the impossibility of assuming the costly expenses of a mortuary transfer. international, or a religious reason given the Muslim funeral rites that prohibit the embalming of the corpse and the extension of burial time.

On the other hand, regarding the suspicion of some of the accusations that there was "inaction or negligence on the part of the State secret services" in preventing the attacks, given the links maintained with Es Satty, leader of the terrorist cell, The Chamber specifies that there is not a single reference in the appeal to procedures sought by the appellants and denied or to the results of those sought and carried out regarding the possible connection of the imam of Ripoll with the secret services of the State at the time in which the crimes occurred. fatal attacks.

He adds to everything that no dates have been specified for an alleged visit to the imam in prison by secret service agents when he was booked for a drug trafficking crime between 2010 and 2014. Therefore, the Court concludes that "it is obvious that Such data, due to their "genericity", do not support a hypothesis of serious non-compliance with the duties of control of known sources of danger that may be required of the secret services entrusted with said function."

THE RIGHT OF DEFENSE

The Chamber also rejects the appeals filed by the convicted Oukabir and Chemlal and discards the reported violations of fundamental rights. The appellants denounced the violation of the guarantees of the right of defense because they were deprived of their right to appoint a defense lawyer during the period of their detention and at their first appearance before the investigating judge. They based this reason on the so-called Atristain doctrine of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

The Judgment analyzes said doctrine and concludes that in this specific case there were "compelling reasons" for the defensive limitations suffered by the appellants. It also rules out that the evidence taken into account to base the conviction was not reliable due to the way in which it was obtained and stored and, on the other hand, concludes that there was no violation of the right to the presumption of innocence invoked by both appellants.

Regarding the appeal of one of the convicted persons, Ben Iazza, the Chamber partially upholds it because it understands that there are reasonable doubts that the appellant knew or represented in sufficient detail that, with his objectively cooperative acts, he was collaborating with a criminal organization with terrorist.

"We do not identify sufficient evidence to allow us to conclude beyond all reasonable doubt that the appellant finally believed that with his contribution he would contribute to the terrorist purposes of a criminal organization. Nor do we consider it sufficiently proven that he had a qualified suspicion that would compel him to activate duties of inquiry and that, instead of fulfilling them, he deployed a conscious strategy of deliberate ignorance in order to evade his duties of avoidance and take advantage of it to evade his responsibility," he states.

However, he is convicted as the author of a crime of cooperation due to serious recklessness because with his behavior, giving up the use of a vehicle and his identity document that the terrorists used to buy explosive precursors, he seriously failed to comply with objective duties of care.