The National Court condemns the sniper for his “determination” to assassinate Sánchez

The National Court has considered proven the incipient plan to assassinate the Prime Minister by the Tarragona security guard tried in March. The court presided over by Ángel Murillo has sentenced Manuel Murillo, 65, to seven and a half years in prison for a crime of proposition-grade homicide (two and a half years) and five more years for depositing weapons of war. In addition, the Chamber has punished him with eight years of deprivation of the right to own and carry weapons. The Prosecutor’s Office claimed 18 and a half years in prison for the sniper.

The factual account of the sentence explains that the accused, who spent two years in preventive detention after his arrest in November 2018, was integrated from his mobile phone into the WhatsApp group called “Terrasa por España”, in which from June of that year, he published messages in which he showed his absolute disagreement with the exhumation of the mortal remains of dictator Francisco Franco, whose procedures had been initiated by the Government.

During those months and until his arrest, Murillo expressed in different messages in this forum or privately to some of its members his intention to end the life of the Prime Minister. The defendant, the court considers proven, “was internalizing that the solution to produce a change in the Spanish political situation was to cause the death of the president (Pedro Sánchez), for which he insisted on requiring help from third parties to carry it out ».

The sentence includes the demonstrations made by Murillo on social networks and also details all the weapons that were seized from him: 13 statutory and seven prohibited, including a weapon of war (Cetme rifle) and which he recognized as his own during the trial. The Chamber has assessed this arsenal of weapons as a circumstance of the high danger of the accused.

“High danger”

Thus, the magistrates point out the difficulty that it must represent and so it must be “attack the life of the President of the Government, which would make one think that the defendant’s idea would be close to the unreasonable and therefore before a proposal that is neither credible nor therefore feasible. ».

However, they admit that although there is no plan “definitely concocted, concocted and even less finished”, a circumstance occurs that is indicative of the “high danger” that the decision adopted by Manuel Murillo supposes: the arsenal of weapons seized from him, among those found at his home and in his vehicle, “not forgetting that his hobby for many years has been sports shooting, continually going to a club to practice.”

The 50-page sentence includes the doctrine of the Supreme Court in relation to the proposal to commit a crime, which requires the decision of the acting party to commit a specific crime, without the acceptance of the proposal being required for its typification. According to the Chamber, in the messages analyzed it has been proven that the defendant “increasingly with more determination, expresses with unwavering determination his will to end the life of the President of the Government.”

For this reason, it concludes that in the phase in which the plan was found, “as embryonic as it was, there is already the persistence, fixation and sleepless determination of the accused to cause the death of Pedro Sánchez.”

The court considers that the psychic alteration of the defendant has not been proven and also refuses to appreciate the incomplete defense of full alcohol intoxication, as well as the extenuating one of drunkenness due to the consumption of alcohol and medications. Nor do they believe his thesis that it was all talk or his admission that this procedure had served as a “good lesson.” An appeal against this ruling is possible before the Second Chamber (Criminal) of the Supreme Court.