Moroccan Man Wrongly Accused of 9/11 Involvement Sues Spain for Compensation

The Spanish justice system issued a European arrest warrant against Farid Hilali, accused of being involved in the September 11 attacks in New York. Detained in several British prisons for years, the Moroccan was ultimately acquitted, his participation in the events not having been proven at the end of the investigations. The accused requested to be compensated for the damages suffered, basing his request on Article 294 of the Organic Law on the Judicial Power (LOPJ) which stipulates that "those who, after having undergone preventive detention, are acquitted or released, must benefit from damages".

Farid was accused of terrorism crimes and belonging to an armed group. He was arrested in 2004 on the basis of telephone conversations he would have had with Imad Eddin Barakat, alias "Abu Dahdah", head of the first Al-Qaeda cell in Spain, dismantled in November 2001.

The Constitutional Court has just ordered the administrative chamber of the National Court to respond adequately to the Moroccan’s request, considering the time he spent in pre-trial detention in the United Kingdom and Spain as an "indivisible whole". Hilali denounced a breach of equality in the application of the law regarding the criteria for setting the amounts to be paid to him as compensation for the time spent unjustly in prison, a complaint that the High Court had left unanswered when the case was referred back to the Administrative Chamber, reports 20minutos.

The Spanish judicial authorities argued that the decision to arrest him came from the British courts and not the Spanish ones, and that the delay in processing the case was due to the fact that he had filed multiple appeals. For the Constitutional Court, "the refusal to compensate the time of imprisonment suffered by the applicant in the prisons of the United Kingdom, cannot be considered reasonable from the point of view of the law".