Spanish Supreme Court Overturns Wrongful Rape Conviction After 24 Years

The High Court overturned the decision of the court of first instance after receiving new evidence, including expert reports on the semen found in a victim’s underwear that did not belong to Tommouhi. These reports, drawn up in 1992 by the Barcelona scientific police, were never presented to the Court, as the experts did not testify at the hearing.

Ahmed Tommouhi served 14 years and ten months in prison for rape and theft crimes he did not commit. Abderrazak Mounib also spent eight years in prison for the same acts before dying of a heart attack in 2000 in 2000. The facts date back to 1991, the year in which several couples were victims of violent theft and the women raped in the cities of Barcelona, Tarragona and Girona over six days. The two Moroccan men, identified by two victims, were arrested by the Civil Guard, who specify that they do not know each other.

The defendants had already been convicted six times for about ten crimes and should have spent more than a century in prison. They would also have been involved in the November 13 attacks in Terrassa, according to La Vanguardia. Victims identified the two defendants in 1995 as the perpetrators of another series of rapes and thefts in the region, while they were already in prison. After investigation, the agents finally got their hands on Antonio García Carbonell, also involved in the 1991 rape series.

The DNA sample found on the underwear of one of the victims, which was not compatible with that of the two defendants, belongs to García Carbonell, according to more detailed analyses by the experts, carried out years later, which led the Supreme Court to overturn the court’s decision against Tommouhi for one of the rapes. A victory for the defense lawyers, Manuel Ollé and Jorge Claret.

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