Supreme Court orders State to pay €2.5 million to Moroccan man wrongly imprisoned for 15 years
The Supreme Court has imposed a compensation payment of €2.5 million on the State for the wrongful imprisonment of Ahmed Tommouhi, who served 15 years in prison for sexual assaults he did not commit.
Supreme Court orders State to pay €2.5 million to Moroccan man wrongly imprisoned for 15 years
The high court has set a multi-million-euro compensation package for a 75-year-old man who was detained for a decade and a half and subsequently placed under judicial supervision for sexual offences he never committed. The amount comes to €2.5 million. The ruling describes the incident as an undeniable judicial failure.
The ordeal of the affected party began in 1991, when he was arrested and subjected to three separate proceedings for robberies and sexual attacks. In one of those trials, held in Barcelona in 1992, the panel of judges—then presided over by the person who now holds the defence ministry position—dismissed forensic evidence demonstrating that the DNA found on the clothing of the victims was not his. The sentence was based solely on the statements of the victims.
Four years later, with the innocent man already in prison, investigators realised that the affected individuals continued to identify him in photo albums because the real culprit, a man named Antonio García Carbonell, bore a very similar physical appearance. Nevertheless, the accused remained deprived of liberty while the actual criminal perpetrated further attacks.
Today, at age 75, with his lower right leg amputated and moving about in a wheelchair, he lives in a small municipality near Barcelona. During his public appearance on Friday, he stated that the monetary amount would not restore his youth or his physical wellbeing: "They have taken 36 years of my life from me". His parents died, having never left their country of origin, and he was scarcely able to witness his children's childhood.
One of his granddaughters went further in her statements: "A public apology is worth more than two and a half million". Neither the current defence minister nor any other authority has issued an apology. His lawyer, Celia Carbonell, has demanded that apologies be extended to the victims as well, since the persistence of the error allowed the real perpetrator to continue committing crimes until the cases became subject to the statute of limitations.
Source: ABC
Source: ABC