Justice closes the investigation into police mistreatment of the detainees of ‘Surround Congress’ a decade later without accusing anyone

The demonstration gathered thousands of people in the vicinity of the Congress of Deputies on September 25, 2012 while the Lower House held a plenary session. A massive concentration of people who, under the slogan ‘Surround Congress’, took to the streets to protest against the policy of cuts that the Popular Party and Mariano Rajoy had implemented during his first year in office. The organizers also called to protest against the “kidnapping of popular sovereignty carried out by the Troika and the financial markets and executed with the consent and collaboration of the majority of political parties.”

The Police arrested several dozen people for the altercations that occurred at the end of the concentration and the case even reached the National Court, where Judge Santiago Pedraz refused to charge the organizers of the demonstration, which cost him the description of “posh anácrat” by Rafael Hernando, then deputy spokesman for the PP in Congress.

Different legal cases have studied the disturbances that occurred both in this first call and in subsequent years. In this case, the Prosecutor’s Office announced last year that it was asking for sentences of up to seven years in prison for two dozen accused of perpetrating attacks on police officers during the clashes. A total of 26 arrested, some of them awaiting trial under that accusation by the Prosecutor’s Office and others already exonerated by the courts, reported having received ill-treatment after their arrest at the Moratalaz police station.

They denounce, for example, that they had to stand “for hours with their hands tied behind their backs facing the wall without being able to touch it or raise their heads, some with bleeding wounds, until one person passed out,” as well as that they were denied water, sudden changes in temperature in the cells, beatings, taunts and “death threats” by agents who, they say, hid their faces behind a balaclava.

The court filed the case last February and it was at the end of June when the Provincial Court of Madrid ratified that decision. There where the lawyers of the complainants affirm that the case has been archived with hardly any proceedings, the Court ensures that “the proceedings likely to clear up doubts and contextualize the police action have been carried out.”

In that order, the Court affirmed that it refused to open “a prospective investigation” around police protocols based, it reproaches, “on mere manifestations of generic reference” compared to an investigation that they describe as “broad and profuse.” In addition, the Provincial Court highlights, as the court had already done before, the case would be prescribed: “It is undoubted that all possible periods of admissible instruction are more than exceeded,” said the Provincial Court.

Appeal to the Constitutional Court

Lawyers Eric Sanz de Bremond and Daniel Amelang, from the Sol Legal Commission, have decided to take the case to the Constitutional Court on behalf of four complainants. These appeals denounce an inaction on the part of the court for more than a decade to finally reach the final file of the case due to lack of evidence. They understand, first of all, that it is a good time for the Court of Guarantees “to initiate a process of internal reflection, which will lead it to reorient its doctrine regarding those cases in which attacks on the physical integrity of citizens by the agents of the State Security Forces and Bodies”.

They denounce that the court’s instruction “is not that it was ineffective; is that it has not existed” and that the documents that certified the filing of the case were not compatible with the fundamental right to physical integrity of the complainants. “Not a single investigation has been carried out. Not even one. The complaint was filed in December 2012 and, since then, the complainants have never been offered action, nor have they taken a statement as injured parties, nor has a statement been taken from any person as investigated”, reproach the lawyers.

The amparo resources explain that if the reason for filing is the prescription of the facts, the debate would be different, but that both the court and the Court reproach the complainants for things that, according to their criteria, are not true. For example, that they explain that the complainants have never identified any agent against whom to direct the criminal action. One of them, they now remember from the Sol Legal Commission, “attributes a detailed aggression caused by the police officers who arrested him. He even came to specify which were these agents who beat him “and provided, they add, his badge numbers. And no statement was ever taken.

Sentence in Strasbourg

The disturbances and alleged police attacks after the demonstration of September 25, 2012 are pending trial, but the courts have also studied the actions of the agents. Last February, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg condemned Spain for the lack of investigation into a complaint of police mistreatment.

The woman denounced that, after the riots, she was forcibly and humiliatingly evicted by the Police from a bar where she was taking refuge with other protesters. The sentence forced the State to pay compensation of 1,000 euros to this woman in a lawsuit brought by Eric Sanz de Bremond, one of the lawyers of the Sol Legal Commission who is now also taking this second case before the Constitutional Court.

“The investigation carried out by the domestic courts was not complete and effective enough to meet the aforementioned requirements of the procedural aspect of Article 3 of the Human Rights Convention” and, therefore, there had been a violation of the Human Rights Convention.