It was the first concentration in favor of Palestine to which Diego Ar came, but something late, but soon enough to see the first detentions of activists. He was one of the hundred of them who mobilized last Monday, July 28, in front of the Egyptian Embassy in Madrid. They demanded the opening of Rafah's passage to get humanitarian aid to the territory besieged by Israeli genocide.
The day resulted in five detainees accused of attack and disobedience against authority. All of them agree that the events happened very fast and that they can hardly forget that day in which they ended in the dungeons of the Salamanca neighborhood police station. As it appears in their parts of injuries, they suffered various bruises as a result of the onslaught of police officers. They were released at dawn. Now they prepare the complaints so that justice can elucidate what happened.
Diego is 32 years old and one of the first things he witnessed was the arrest of a 73 -year -old Gazatí. “I did not see that the arrest was motivated by anything, only that he was talking to the police and then took him, and it was not the first detention they did,” he tells Eldiario.es. From then on, he listened to several police officers to make “disrespectful and incendiary comments,” according to their testimony, towards concentrated activists, who did not stop chanting songs in favor of Palestine and against the Israel Zionist regime.
“I saw how a police officer insulted an old lady. He called him hysterical and told him that he needed to go to the psychiatrist,” says Diego, who recriminated this behavior to the agent. “I told him that as a policeman I should not make those comments, that I was not professional, and they identified me. I gave him the ID and they returned it to me and we continue in the concentration,” he adds.
The situation was repeated shortly after, although this time the response given by the police who told him that his attitude was not professional was an insult: “Gilipollas called me. I replied that I shouldn't say that and they stopped me.” Diego states that he was a victim of police brutality: “When they took me behind the van and nobody saw me, the same policeman who had insulted me hit me a fist in my face when two other agents held me.
They stop the driver of concentration
The advanced man who speaks Diego at the beginning is Rachad Ghalleb, originally from the Gaza Strip. It was he who had the protest initiative in front of the Egyptian embassy. “They stopped me when I criticized them the arrest of a woman and told them that they had to allow people to express themselves freely,” he says. Minutes later, several police officers surrounded Ghalleb, who still had the microphone in his hands. “One of them gave me a strong push and the others grabbed me to take me detained. I was with my hand handcuffed four hours,” he denounces.
Sick of various pathologies, at no time the police took into account what Ghalleb told them. “I am diabetic and I had been eating anything all morning, and I need to take my pills, in addition to that I am operated on bladder cancer and I have incontinence, and they ignored me,” he says. Like the others, this 73 -year -old man met a doctor at the La Princesa Hospital about five hours after the arrest occurs.
Changes in the writing of the crowded
Ghalleb says that until 9:00 p.m. they did not let him make a call, which he used to warn his wife. Almost similar is what Hilario Villalvilla lived, 65. According to their calculations, 70% of protesters were women over 50. “Suddenly I saw that there were problems with the police. I went to Velázquez Street and I saw a girl who said she was a journalist held by two agents. I know that one of them stayed with my face,” he started his testimony.
That same policeman, minutes later, approached him with another agent and asked for the ID. “They told me that they were going to propose for sanction because I had grabbed the neck and pulled to the ground. They were accusing me of something very serious that I had not done. I asked for their plate number and noted it,” he adds. The arrest came after one of the police arrested him on the ground, which wounded wounds in his elbow, knee and hands. “I really don't understand how a peaceful protest of older people can end like this,” he says.
Villalvilla stressed that at the police station he heard some comments among the police who caught his attention: “I saw them very nervous. They talked to each other to erase or change some phrases of the crowded. I think that is why they left us handcuffed in the hall for hours. They were so pending that everything had a certain correlation that gave them the same if we ate or not,” he explains.
The National Police confirms the arrest of five people for public disorders, disobedience and attack on authority and injuries. According to Eldiario.es, the mobilization had not been communicated, so the documentation was required to various protesters. They also report that eight agents were injured.
Disobedience and attack against authority
The lawyer who defends the five detainees last Monday is Daniel Amelang, a member of the legal network buffet. “It must be noted that none of them has gone to court, so they have not yet been able to report their testimony,” he emphasizes. This lawyer expresses that both their defendants and other protesters will denounce the agents for having suffered injuries, insults, vexations and, in some cases, threats, even for illegal detention and coercion.
Everyone is charged with an attack on authority and disobedience. The first of the crimes is punishable by a deprivation of liberty from six months to three years; and the second from six months to two years. “In any case, disobedience would be absorbed by the attack attack,” he explains. To all this a possible crime of injuries could be added, since some police officers said they had suffered.
Amelang points out that he was not surprised. “Yes, I thought that in this specific case, since it is a caceroly called on a Monday with a profile of mainly retired people it was rare for the thing to climb so fast,” he says. The lawyer affects that this type of behavior on the part of the police pursue activists to intimidate to secondary other future protests.
A policeman launches the mobile of a protester
It also does not forget to point out how a police officer retained the mobile phone of one of the protesters for a few minutes. When the woman asked her to return it, the uniformed threw it to the ground, about three meters away. All this has been attested by a video recorded during the concentration to which this medium has had access. “They want no one to do documented or record police actions, but it is perfectly legitimate to do so. Their intentionality is to prevent people from exercising those rights that have a citizenship,” says Amelang.
The facts will be prosecuted within at least one year, according to the lawyer. He mentions that if the police have agreed to lie in the crowded, sooner or later they will have to give the appropriate and convincing explanations in front of the judge.
Diego continues to maintain that “the police were the main provocative” of that day of struggle in favor of Palestine. In their case, the police indicated in the crowded that the wounds he presented after the arrest had been self -inflicted: “They say they held my head so that I would not hit myself, and that for that they had to throw me to the ground.” This will only be one of the many stories that the police wielded that day and that activists will try to throw over the judicial process in which prison sentences are played. At the moment, Amelang has already asked the judge to record the security cameras throughout the area.
