Spain frees serial rapist on october 25, 2013 at 6:13 pm in news

Spain frees serial rapist
on october 25, 2013 at 6:13 pm in news
MADRID (AFP) – A Spanish court freed a serial
rapist 17 years into his 30-year sentence under a
European human rights ruling that also benefits
terrorism convicts, officials said Friday.
Antonio Garcia Carbonell, 76, became the first non-
terrorism convict to benefit from the ruling, which
has angered Spanish authorities.
The European decision ruled against a Spanish
judicial practice that cuts remission earned through
prison work, mostly for jailed members of the
armed Basque group ETA.
An official in the Catalonia regional courts service
told AFP on Friday that a Barcelona court had
ordered Garcia’s release the previous day. Media
reported he had walked free almost immediately.
Garcia was convicted of a string of rapes, robberies
and abductions and sentenced to a total of 268
years in jail from 1996, of which he was ordered to
serve a legal maximum of 30 years.
In a written ruling ordering his release on Thursday,
the Barcelona court upheld an appeal by Garcia’s
lawyers on the grounds of Monday’s decision by the
European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg in a
separate case.
“The penal liability to which Antonio Garcia
Carbonell was sentenced is extinguished… and
consequently the convict’s liberty is decreed,” the
Barcelona court said.
The European court said Monday that Spain had
wrongly extended the sentence of Ines del Rio
Prada, a 55-year-old woman jailed for a series of
violent ETA attacks.
It said Spain breached European rights law by
cutting the years of remission she earned for prison
work.
Spanish courts had also applied this practice,
known as the Parot Doctrine, to Garcia, who would
otherwise have been due for early release in 2011.
“This convict is in a comparable situation to the
appellant in the Rio Prada case,” so the Strasbourg
court’s ruling is “binding” in his case, the Barcelona
court said.
The ruling in Strasbourg outraged the families of
people killed by ETA in its four-decade campaign of
bombings and shootings for an independent Basque
homeland.
So far 51 imprisoned ETA members have demanded
their freedom since the ruling.
The National Court in Madrid on Friday ordered the
release of the second ETA prisoner in Spain to
benefit from the change in the law. A court in
London has granted conditional release to a third.
Spain’s interior ministry said the change in the law
could also lead to several other rapists and
murderers being released.
A court in Valencia said on Friday it had received a
request for full release from a man jailed for
sexually abusing minors.
Media reports said the man was a physical
education teacher who abused children aged
between eight and 12 and is currently on conditional
release.