MADRID: Spain’s top criminal court said Friday it had ordered psychiatric internment for a Moroccan man who murdered a church official in a 2023 machete attack that horrified the country.
Madrid’s Audiencia Nacional court dismissed terrorism charges for the attacks at two churches in the southern port city of Algeciras on January 25, 2023.
But it said in a statement that Yassin Kanjaa would spend up to 30 years in a penitentiary psychiatric establishment.
Prosecutors had sought 50 years in jail for Kanjaa on terrorism charges for killing a sacristan with machete blows to the head and neck at one church, and wounding a priest during mass at another.
They argued he had “undergone a process of radicalization, taking on board the most stringent Islamic theories which uphold its incompatibility with the principles and values of other religions and the need to act to eliminate them.”
The court said that, although the defendant had committed murder and attempted murder, expert reports showed the severity of his psychological disorders.
The experts said these disorders had caused the “impairment of his intellectual and volitional faculties” and so the court ruled out a terror motive.
At the time, Kanjaa had “a schizophrenic profile with an acute psychotic imbalance,” said the court.
The attacks were caused by a “delirious ideation of harm and messianic thoughts,” it added.
It had opted for psychiatric internment as the defendant “has no awareness of the offenses committed, nor does he show remorse, which represents a high level of danger,” the court added.
Kanjaa must pay 150,000 euros ($174,000) to the widow of the murdered sacristan, 50,000 euros to each of his two children and 17,000 euros to the relatives of the wounded priest.