Confirmed the fine of 720 euros to the man who encouraged on Twitter to cut the neck of Felipe VI

Dismisses the defendant's appeal and recalls that an invitation to kill the King is not protected by freedom of expression

MADRID, 1 Ago. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The National Court has confirmed the fine of 720 euros that was imposed for a crime of libel to the man who encouraged on Twitter to cut King Felipe VI's neck after the monarch delivered his television speech on the covid-19 pandemic in March 2020.

Thus, the First Section of the Criminal Chamber has dismissed the appeal filed by the man against the decision of the Central Criminal Court of the National High Court to convict him. According to the court, the content of the message published on the social network "is limited to the insult and the invitation to kill the King, which cannot be protected by the freedom of expression invoked."

In a sentence, to which Europa Press has had access, the magistrates have explained that "there can be no freedom of expression when 'the barrier of the limit of mere criticism' is exceeded, and in this case it is far exceeded".

The Criminal Chamber has responded in this way to the appeal filed by the man, who alleged that both the accusation of the Prosecutor's Office and the sentence focused on the expression "son of a bitch" - which is considered a crime of insulting the Corona-- and not in that of "let's cut his neck", which in any case would be part of a crime of threats, but not that of libel for which he was convicted.

The magistrates, however, have considered that "this reductive interpretation cannot be accepted", given that the complete expression contains an insult --"son of a bitch"-- which is accompanied by others --"let's cut his throat" and "we are taking"-- and "should be assessed together with the previous one".

According to the court, "what is deduced from the literal tenor itself is not a mere easy insult without any intention beyond a momentary explosion of anger, rage or rejection with what the King represents, but an attitude of contempt for the person, because nothing is said or criticized about the words spoken about the pandemic in the speech that prompted that reaction. This, in addition to "a social invitation or incitement to the use of violence (let's cut his neck) that cannot be justified under the defense of any type of political or ideological ideas, absent on the other hand from his message."

In this sense, the National Court has stressed that the man recognized the facts declared proven for which he was sentenced; that is to say, that he published a tweet in Catalan in which he said: "Let's cut this son of a bitch's neck, we're taking too long."

Thus, he has pointed out that "neither the authorship nor the reality of the messages published on the social network is questioned" in which 168 people followed him and remained active since January 2014.

In his appeal, the defendant emphasized the number of followers he had, stating that they were "just over a hundred followers". The magistrates, however, have indicated that although "it lacks any criminal relevance" in this case, "there is no doubt that its expression on a social network multiplies the dissemination of the message, especially if it is published openly, that is, freely access to any Internet user".

Thus, the National Court has considered that the fact that he published the message on the social network serves "to assess the seriousness of the behavior and the intention of wanting it to reach as many people as possible".

In seven pages, moreover, the Criminal Chamber has recalled that -as the Constitutional Court pointed out- "freedom of expression is not, in short, an absolute and unlimited fundamental right, but rather has logically, like all others, its limits, so that any expression does not deserve, for the simple fact of being, constitutional protection".

In this sense, the magistrates have underlined that "expressions that are undoubtedly injurious or unrelated to the ideas or opinions that are exposed and that are unnecessary for the exposition of the same" are "excluded" from constitutional protection; that is, those that "in the specific circumstances of the case are offensive or disgraceful."