Violence in Spain: the justice system takes over the case of the Moroccan group "Batmoro

At the origin of this violence that shook the city of Murcia was the assault on Domingo, a 68-year-old man who was violently attacked, according to his account, by young Moroccans, while he was taking his usual morning walk on Wednesday, July 9th. From the following weekend, racist messages and erroneous information about the assault began to spread on social media, as indicated by the Spanish Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska. At the same time, racist gatherings were organized against residents, mostly from North Africa, recalls La Razon.

These demonstrations were organized in the form of "hunts" via social networks, as did the Telegram group Deport Them Now, which the messaging app had to suspend for "dissemination of calls to violence". In total, thirteen people were arrested for these acts. One of them, a young man from Mataró, has been in pre-trial detention since July 17th for risk of recidivism. Furthermore, the competent court of Murcia maintains the opening of the proceedings against about ten people.

Due to these tensions that lasted eleven days, several inhabitants of the city spent several nights locked up at home. On July 25th, a citizen filed a complaint with the Madrid prosecutor’s office for terrorism and hate speech against "the Maghrebi gangs in an irregular situation in Spain against the Spaniards". "Armed and hooded groups of Maghrebi origin, led by a man wearing a Batman mask on his face, have engaged in a campaign of terror against the Spaniards of the locality, organizing a manhunt against them, and in particular against people of Gypsy origin," the citizen states in his complaint, to which he attached a video as evidence.

In the images, "we can see that Maghrebis are carrying weapons such as baseball bats, machetes, iron chains, pyrotechnic equipment, etc." and how "they speak the language of Morocco and two Spaniards were seriously injured during the attacks perpetrated by this terrorist organization". The plaintiff requests that "these facts be transmitted to the Audiencia Nacional and that preliminary proceedings be immediately opened in order to identify the perpetrators of these terrorist acts and that the law enforcement authorities be instructed to identify them, which they have not done so far". On November 4th, the Madrid court transferred the file to the Cartagena prosecutor’s office, which it considers competent to hear the facts.