Spain to Pay $500,000 Compensation to Couple Wrongfully Detained for Terrorism

The couple was arrested in 2016 and held in pre-trial detention for disseminating Daesh jihadist propaganda videos on Facebook, reports El Confidencial Digital. In June 2018, the justice system sentenced the man to seven years in prison and the woman to one and a half years for jihadist indoctrination and apology for terrorism. They appealed, obtaining the annulment of this decision by the Supreme Court.

In October 2019, the National High Court issued a final judgment and acquitted the man, the judges having found "no objective data proving or allowing to affirm the existence of an act or acts of collaboration of the accused with a terrorist organization." The same goes for his wife, whose publications on Facebook, according to the judges, "do not incite violence or insurrection or the apology of terrorism or its perpetrators." Acquitted, the couple decided in 2020 to request financial compensation for the time they were unjustly detained. The Moroccan spent nearly three years (1,044 days) in prison, and his wife, about a year (333 days).

The couple filed an appeal before the National Court to denounce a malfunction of the administration of justice and requested to be compensated for the "substantial damages" suffered. They argue that before being arrested, the Moroccan was earning 3,642 euros per month, which allowed them to cover their needs and those of their 4-year-old and 1-year-old children, including their schooling. During his detention, the man says he "stopped receiving 125,042 euros in salary," having lost his job.

For these damages at the professional, personal and family level, not to mention the damage to their public image that had been "totally destroyed" because of the publications on their arrest and conviction in which they were treated as "jihadists", the couple requested that the State pay them 739,478.64 euros, or 534,676.34 euros for the man and 204,803.30 euros for the woman. The judges accepted the request for compensation, but reduced the amount requested by the couple. Recognizing the "moral prejudice" suffered by them and their children, added to the "significant psychiatric and psychological damages", they ordered the State to pay 450,886 euros to the man and 45,000 euros to the woman.