Any time I found someone writing in English about what I want to write it's a pleasure... even if the subject is so disagreeable and dispicable as is the Mari Luz case. John, the editor of Iberian Notes, has written about it in his blog: I wouldn't have said this better.
Inside Europe: Iberian Notes:
"The big news in Spain is the Mari Luz case. Down in Huelva some sex pervert kidnapped and murdered a little girl named Mari Luz back in January, and they just found her body a few days ago. The perv has been arrested, and here's the fun part: he had two prior convictions for child sexual abuse, once on his own daughter, and they never bothered actually putting him in jail.Really the people here are very angry about this, as you can imagine. But above all, as John points out before, of course, the most angry of all is the father of the little girl, who has announced legal actions against the responsibles and has asked "for responsibilities, specially political ones". He has also asked the Minister of Justice, Bermejo, to give his opinion about the case. And understandably, he has asked for the Penal Code to be changed and the pedophiles be in prison for life. Even if that's something that a lot of people here would support (the pedophiles are not in most cases reinserted or resocialized), I don't think it would even get to parliament as political correctness is a value here.
The judiciary is being seriously questioned over this one, since the pervert never should have been anywhere near this child. Jail is made for sick bastards who go around sexually abusing kids, not for people who smoke pot or write bad checks. Spain, by the way, does not have a register of sex offenders, though it does have one of woman-beaters, and there is no law requiring that people be informed if a sex offender is living in their neighborhood, either.
Mari Luz was from a gypsy family that is integrated into society, while the perv seems to be a lower-class payo. The Huelva gypsies are understandably very angry, and they've tried to lynch both the perv and one of his brothers (who is almost certainly innocent, though the perv's wife might have helped him cover up the crime).
This guy would be a clear death penalty candidate in the US, and I'd have no problem voting for it if I were on the jury."
Popular Party has asked the Government to accept the responsibility of the people in charge of the case and has announced some measures. I am anxious to see what measures are they considering for this case, specially because this is the first time they open their mouths after losing the elections and being more worried about the seat under their asses than about Spanish future.
Things are getting even more complicated after the so-depedent from Socialist Government newspaper, El País, has published that the Judge's office responsible of the process, was investigated last November without detecting any irregularities. As the investigating office depends directly from the General Council of the Judicial Power, the investigation will also have to say if that service wasn't working fine and where its error was.
Anyway, El Mundo has published that in that same investigation there were detected some "little" unjustified delays in the Judge's way of handling the cases. And that the same Judge was fined in 1995 for unjustified delays in another case of another minor's mistreatment.
Related news:
Several minors (3 13-year-old and a 15-year-old) are accused of raping another a 10-year-old minor in Adra (Almería) @ ABC.es. Investigations have shown that one of them actually raped him while the other three actually helped him or lied to the police to free him from accusation. The alleged rapists used to stole the bicycle of the 10-year-old boy to make him ask for it. They then obliged him to go to a hut situated in a lonely place near the village.
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