Courts | TUI confirms sentence for policemen involved in beating to death

In a case that goes back to March 2007, the Court of Final Appeal (TUI) confirmed the verdict and sentence attributed by the Court of First Instance (TJB) to four police officers. The officers were sentenced to seven years in prison for the practice, in partnership, and for omission of a crime of serious offence to physical integrity.

As per the statement issued by TUI, the Collective Court noted that, according to the rule of article 9 of the Criminal Code, the crime in question “can be committed not just by a direct action, but also by omission,” remarking that the “law establishes the same penal framework for both the action and the omission”. This notes that punishment in the latter case depends only on the verification of two assumptions, one regarding the adequacy of the omission to avoid the outcome and the second regarding the imposition of a legal duty on the person in order to avoid such an outcome.
In such a case, the ruling of the TUI states, with regard to the crime of offense to physical integrity, that the illegality can occur either by action or by omission of the agent.

The court also adds that it is clear from the facts that the defendants did not take timely measures to prevent the victim from continuing to be assaulted as well as not providing her with necessary and timely assistance. Moreover, even if the defendants were aware of the assaults, they did not take any action to avoid the death of the victim.
As  noted when the first sentence was handed down by the TJB, as officers of the Public Security Police Force, the defendants had a legal obligation to protect the victim, and so they have deliberately infringed the obligations imposed on them by law, denying as the Second Instance Court had also done before the pretention of the defendants.
The case occurred on March 28, 2007 following a police operation. During questioning on a case of drug possession, the suspect assaulted a police officer in the police station, being then targeted with retaliation from the officer after he had been detained and restrained.

As a result of the assault that the four officers witnessed but ignored, the victim eventually died a few hours after being taken into custody.