A Spanish court on Wednesday upheld a disputed nine-year jail term for five men who sexually abused a woman, despite two out of five judges believing the gang committed rape and calling for tougher sentences.
The men were accused of raping the woman, then aged 18, at the entrance to an apartment building in Pamplona on July 7, 2016, at the start of the popular week-long San Fermin bull-running festival.
The five filmed the incident with their smartphones and then bragged about it on WhatsApp, where they referred to themselves as La Manada, or “The Pack.”
Photo: Reuters
In April, they were handed nine years each in jail for sexual abuse, but judges acquitted them of the more serious offense of sexual assault, ruling there had been no violence or intimidation as the victim did not resist or fight back.
Both parties appealed the sentence, which sparked furious, nationwide protests.
“If you resist they kill you, if you don’t resist you consent. What to do?” one sign in a protest read.
On Wednesday, the high court of northern Navarra region upheld the ruling.
It said there had been no proof of violence and that it was too difficult to discern whether intimidation had taken place, given the lack of obvious show of force or threats toward the victim.
Under Spanish law — which the government is now considering reforming — there has to be evidence of violence or intimidation for an offense to be classified as a sexual assault.
However, two out of five of the male judges disagreed, the statement said.
They called the assault “an act of intimidation and coercion created by all of them, laying a trap for the victim given the near zero possibility she had of escaping.”
The two judges said it was rape based also on the “degrading” acts inflicted on the victim and the fact that she was left on the ground “half naked,” while one of the offenders grabbed her phone and took out the memory cards.
The two judges concluded each of the men should have been jailed for 14 years, three months and one day.
Prosecutors had asked for prison terms of 22 years and 10 months.
Agustin Martinez, the lawyer of four of the five men, said they were appealing the latest court decision to the Supreme Court.
“What happened in Pamplona ... was consensual sexual relations between six adults,” he said, adding that there was no “violence or intimidation.”
However, prosecutors pointed out that the victim had met the men just seven minutes before the incident and did not even know their names.
The office of lawyers defending the victim said that it too would appeal the sentence, as did the city of Pamplona.
Separately, all five judges ruled that the filming of the assault had violated the victim’s privacy and ordered the court that first judged the case to issue another sentence for that offense.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was