Today, Thursday, March 10, the third and final hearing in the trial of our comrades Mónica and Francisco took place. There was mainly the summing up of the lawyers for both the defence and the prosecution, and that of the Public Prosecutor.
The hearing began with the expert witnesses called by the defence, who submitted reports on the comparative study of DNA from a number of objects found after the explosion, and DNA of Francisco and Mónica extracted from objects taken from their cells. They confirmed what had already been exposed in the reports: there is absolutely no correspondence.
Subsequently, the judge asked whether the parties confirmed their initial conclusions, a question to which the lawyer of the specific accuser, the woman who was in Pilar at the moment of the explosion, confirmed wanting to maintain the charges of “damage” and “injury”, but asked for the charges of membership and conspiracy to be dropped, significantly lowering the request to 12 years and a day for each and asking for compensation of 102,000 euro.
The summing up began with the Public Prosecutor who retained the 4 charges as in the indictment: membership, massacre, injury and conspiracy. He also retained the request of 44 years prison for each. In his argumentation he insisted that after the oral hearing and the investigators’ reports, the participation of the comrades in an organisation of a terrorist nature remains proven.
In the face of the discrediting of the experts by the defence in previous hearings by alluding to their lack of documented training in relation to what is stated in the reports, the prosecutor wanted to validate their professional offices on the basis of their technical and practical knowledge. The prosecution continued his exposition along the same lines, taking for granted the participation of Francisco and Mónica in the action in Pilar and their intention to attack the shrine of Montserrat. Concerning the charge of injury, he referred to the medical reports that assess the acoustic injury and the psychological consequences of the woman affected.
He continued with an exposition of the specific charge, explaining the reason for the change in his conclusions after the hearing, pointing out that although he agrees with the Prosecutor concerning membership of the comrades in the FAI-FRI and GAC, there are no sufficient arguments for this to be considered a terrorist organization. A similar argument was used to justify the withdrawal of the charge of massacre: he considers that effectively their visit to Montserrat had the intention to attack the same, but that there is insufficient evidence to prove it. In relation to the accusations, it is important to note that he changed the charge of “massacre” to “damage” with terrorist aims.
The final expositions were by the defence and were blunt and categorical in relation to the accusatory thesis. It was an extensive exposure, so we will look at the main aspects of the argumentation here:
– The court’s lack of impartiality for having participated in investigations which were up to the investigating judge. It was also discussed whether the fact that the court would have been the same to decree the extension of prison on remand arguing that there was sufficient “evidence” to adopt this measure was a sign of impartiality. The fact that police reports were included in the trial as expert evaluations was also mentioned.
– Lack of truth for reporting in the investigation that Francisco and Mónica had been sentenced in Chile for the caso Bombas and then released due to a “procedural error”, as they were acquitted for lack of evidence.
– The fact that the order of judicial proceedings and the prosecution’s text were a “cut and paste” of the investigators’ reports highlights the lack of impartiality in the investigation by the Public Prosecutor and in the preliminary investigation of the case.
– With solid technical documentation, the rigour of the system used to obtain the results of the anthropometric analysis was questioned, pointing out, for example, that the technical specificity of the program applied is never clear; why this system was used and not another and the fact that the results are far from reliable as they do not have the minimum technical requirements (camera distance, angle, light, pixels, image quality).
– There was some discussion on the use of “open” sources, ie, obtained from the internet without a comparison with original sources.
– It was reiterated that no eyewitness gives any description matching the two.
– The concept and practice of “solidarity and mutual aid” are inherent in all anarchists.
– In requiring at least 3 people to form a terrorist organization, the police investigation needed to link the two with other people and groups, and it is here that the GAC come into the trial.
– There is insufficient evidence to put them in conjunction with GAC and in no case could this be considered a terrorist organization, indicating that no action has been claimed with this acronym. The communiqués of the GAC and the book “Against Democracy” were gone through, demonstrating that no aspect of their contents that could indicate that this is an organization with terrorist aims.
– The defence argue that FAI-FRI does not correspond to any structure or organization and that it is a “signature” with which anarchists are called to action internationally. It also reiterates the fact that from 2010 it is no longer identified as a terrorist organization by the European Union.
– With regard to the explosive device danger ratio, based on the conviction that they are not responsible for the fact, it is reported that whoever carried out the Pilar action had no intention of causing harm to people given the characteristics of the device, the time at which it exploded and the telephone alert.
The trial ended with Francisco and Mónica’s right to a final word, where they took the opportunity to reaffirm their ideas as anarchists. Following this, the judge ordered the court to be cleared, amidst shouts of support of the comrades present.
We end this summary with the words with which the two comrades concluded their declarations, reflecting the strength and consistency of their convictions:
