Spanish Pedophile Arrested After a Mistaken Pardon By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: August 5, 2013 MADRID — Spain had a seemingly simple request for Morocco’s king: Pardon 18 Spaniards convicted in his country, and let 30 others return to Spain to serve out their prison terms. Instead, King Mohammed VI pardoned all 48 Spanish prisoners, including a man convicted of raping children. The episode, apparently the result of a bureaucratic mix-up, has embarrassed both nations, prompting rare protests in Morocco and an ultimately successful scramble to find the freed pedophile. It has also raised legal questions about the fate of the other 29 Spaniards believed to have been incorrectly pardoned. The Spanish police detained the convicted pedophile, Daniel Galván Viña, 63, in southeastern Spain on Monday after he had nearly a week of freedom. Mr. Galván had been convicted of raping 11 children in 2011 and was serving a 30-year sentence in Morocco before the pardon came through. Morocco’s king retracted his pardon of Mr. Galván over the weekend, and Morocco, via Interpol, the international police organization, issued an international arrest warrant for him. Because Spain does not extradite its citizens to Morocco, he is most likely to finish his term in a Spanish prison. A Spanish Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said some of the 48 were believed to be back in Spain and others still in Morocco. Most were said to have been serving time for drug-related offenses, and there was no word from Morocco that any more pardons would be rescinded. The pardons and prison transfers were requested last month during a four-day official visit to Morocco by King Juan Carlos of Spain, and Morocco’s consent was viewed as a gesture that would benefit bilateral relations. A Spanish official confirmed that Spain had asked Morocco to transfer 30 convicts to prisons in Spain while requesting that a separate list of 18 prisoners be pardoned and freed. But the Moroccan authorities apparently put the two lists together, the official said. Mr. Galván’s release infuriated many Moroccans. On Friday night, hundreds protested the pardon, a very rare public show of displeasure with their king. By Sunday, the king was insisting that he had not known the severity of Mr. Galván’s crimes, and later that day he announced that he had revoked the pardon and ordered an investigation. The Moroccan royal office announced Monday that an investigation into Mr. Galván’s pardon had concluded that it resulted from failures in the prison administration, which “inadvertently passed on erroneous information.” The office said that the prison services director, Hafid Benhachem, had been fired.
Posted on: Tue, 06 Aug 2013 04:32:58 +0000
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