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.
Spain orders psychiatric internment for 2023 church machete attacker
https://arab.news/mubff
Spain orders psychiatric internment for 2023 church machete attacker
- Madrid’s Audiencia Nacional court dismissed terrorism charges for the attacks at two churches in 2023
- It said Yassin Kanjaa would spend up to 30 years in a penitentiary psychiatric establishment
US lawmaker Fine criticized by rights advocates, Democrats after anti-Muslim remarks
- Fine’s past comments include calling for the mass expulsion of all Muslims from the US, labeling of Muslims as “terrorists” and the mocking of the starvation and killing of Palestinians in Gaza, among others
WASHINGTON: Rights advocates and multiple Democrats on Tuesday condemned anti-Muslim comments by Republican US Representative Randy Fine who said on Sunday that “the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.”
Fine, whose comments against Muslims have often sparked outrage, has dismissed the criticism and since doubled down on his remarks on social media. The Council on American-Islamic Relations designated the Republican US lawmaker from Florida as an anti-Muslim extremist last year.
“If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one,” Fine said on X on Sunday in a post that had over 40 million views as of Tuesday afternoon.
Some high-profile Democrats including California Governor Gavin Newsom called for him to resign while House of Representatives Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called Fine an “Islamophobic, disgusting and unrepentant bigot.”
Jeffries also called for Republicans — who hold a majority in both chambers of Congress — to hold Fine accountable.
“To ignore this is to accept and normalize it,” Democratic US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said. Fine’s past comments include calling for the mass expulsion of all Muslims from the US, labeling of Muslims as “terrorists” and the mocking of the starvation and killing of Palestinians in Gaza, among others. Rights advocates have noted a rise in Islamophobia in the US in recent years due to a range of factors including hard-line immigration policies and white-supremacist rhetoric, as well as the fallout of Israel’s war in Gaza on American society.
