Wrongly Convicted Moroccan Man Dies in Spanish Prison Awaiting Exoneration

At the end of 1996, Abderrazak Mounib had confided to a friend he had contacted from prison that he and another Moroccan, Ahmed Toummouhi, had already spent five years in prison for rapes they had not committed in 1991. They had been identified by victims and the Supreme Court had confirmed their sentences. Abderrazak was calling the friend in question so insistently that the latter had finally come to believe in his innocence, reports La Vanguardia.

"The Civil Guard knows they are innocent," Abderrazak’s wife Fatima, then 48 years old with four children (two daughters and two sons) aged 8 to 18, told the friend who had visited her. The friend had proof of this after becoming acquainted with the report of the Civil Guard Command transmitted to the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the High Court of Justice of Catalonia, which confirmed the innocence of Abderrazak and his co-defendant.

Months after their arrest, similar crimes to those they were accused of had been committed. The Civil Guard opened an investigation and eventually apprehended Antonio García Carbonell, a Spaniard who bore a striking resemblance to Abderrazak Mounib. Objects belonging to the victims and the weapons he used to intimidate them were found at his home. The two accused Moroccans had therefore been convicted without evidence.

The analysis of a handkerchief containing semen, found on one of the victims, revealed the presence of the Spaniard’s DNA. Once his guilt was proven, the judge annulled Abderrazak’s conviction, but for unknown reasons, the Moroccan remained in prison where he died of a heart attack on April 30, 2000. Ahmed Toummouhi, on the other hand, remained in prison until 2006 before being released. The confirmed perpetrator of the acts, Antonio García Carbonell, was released from prison in 2013.