Wednesday, May 10, 2006

AS I WROTE when the incident took place, it's no wonder Zapatero is best buddy with Castro and Chavez, since they're doing similar things:
A Spanish court jailed three police officers for illegally detaining two opposition Popular Party supporters who barracked the former defence minister Jose Bono.

It is the first time police officers have been jailed on charges of this kind since democracy returned to Spain in 1975 with the death of the dictator Francisco Franco.

The court in Madrid imposed prison terms ranging from three to five years on a police chief and two inspectors on the false arrest charges.

The police chief and one of the inspectors also stand accused of falsifying public documents.

Of course, this report by government-owned press agency EFE duly sanitizes things, because they're worse:
A Madrid provincial court sentenced three police officers to a total of 13 years in prison for illegal arrest, forgery, and blackmail in the arrests of two PP members at the Association of Victims of Terrorism's demonstration in January 2005.

Ex-defense minister Jose Bono was shouted at and insulted, but claimed he had been physically attacked, leading to the arrests of the two PP members. Madrid prefect Constantino Mendez resigned yesterday afternoon after the decision was made public and calls for his resignation were made.

The PP members announced that they would donate the €24,000 in indemnities specified by the sentence to the AVT. The judge also ruled that Madrid provincial prefect Constantino Mendez committed perjury at the trial. The prosecutor's office asserted the police officers had not committed any crime, and called for the three to be acquitted and released. The three will be expelled from the police force. They may appeal their sentence to the Supreme Court.

The judge's ruling quoted Mendez as saying on January 24 that "there would soon be identifications and arrests because the police investigation provided sufficient evidence." According to the judge, "That did not correspond with reality. since the police investigation did not detect either aggression against the minister or any identifications in the incidents."
It's even worse than what this second report says: the Defense minister at that time falsely claimed that he had been hit; the pictures were published in the press nevertheless, and among them two PP members appeared relatively close to him which were identified by the Socialist-friendly press. Even worse, when orders from above called for arrests, some police detectives refused to go along and pick two people without any evidence that any crime had been committed (because merely shouting at a politician is not a crime, is it? if it was, how many people would be in prison in the US?). These police detectives were disciplined and removed from the case until the ones who would agree, and who would dare to falsify the witness reports, were found.

Just imagine if this had happened in Bu$hitler's US, or in Spain itself under Aznar, when several prominent politicians from his party were actually hit during the March 13 2004 demonstrations following the Madrid terrorist attacks, or in the run up to the war in Iraq when "pacifists" chanting No to war, no to violence often chased and hit PP politicians because they were supporting toppling Saddam Hussein.

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