The Criminal Court number 23, Madrid has acquitted two activists of Femen of a hate crime and various anti-religious sentiments by be with the naked torso to the high altar of the Cathedral of the Almudena of Madrid in a protest in favor of abortion that took place on the 13th of June 2014.
Nothing more to know the verdict, the lawyer of Femen, Endika Zulueta, has held that the court ruling is “good news” to all those people primed with the right to freedom of expression and peaceful protest”.
The Prosecution requested nine months of imprisonment for each of the activists for an offence against religious feelings, while the private prosecution, brought by the Spanish Association of Christian Lawyers, requested two years in prison for the same crime, and various anti-religious feelings.
The sentence which rejects both commit such offences as none expressed any expression “on the way of humiliation, the contempt, the insult or the disparagement of catholics” who encourage others discriminate, humiliate them, and hate them, and “still less to act in a violent manner against them”.
it Is considered proven that on that day both “desvistieron from the waist up, leaving her torso completely naked, climbed to the cross of the Cathedral of The Almudena “and chained themselves to the lattice caged” while they shouted expressions such as “Altar to an abortion”, “illegal abortion, let’s take the Altar” or “abortion is sacred”. In addition, in his torso had written the expressions “Altar to an abortion”, “Gallardon inquisitor” or “illegal abortion”.
Nor mocked dogmas or beliefs, according to the judge
The magistrate believes that with this action the activists only tried to defend the right to abortion and “cannot be considered to produce, in addition to an act offensive, an act of grave desecration that it interfered with the fundamental right to religious freedom of catholics.” What is “unquestionable,” says the judgment, is that neither derided the dogmas or beliefs of the Catholic Church nor tried to vejar or underestimate its practitioners.
it was not His intention to offend the feelings of religious, but of “oppose” position “and a part of the society that there is a right to abortion and that this is essential” in front of “the public position of the Catholic Church to uphold the sacredness of life from the moment of the same conception.” And they did, says the judgment, “in a context in which there was social and political debate on whether abortion laws should be or not modified”.
The two activists of Femen, to the door of the courts. / EFE
in Addition, according to the European Court of Human Rights, the defense of ideas-with the exception of hate crimes, the judge has rejected – should be supported, “even that hurt, offend or importunen”. “And this is what clearly made the accused, defending an idea, of the right to abortion”, argues the statement, that is actionable.
Second sentence in favor of Femen
Their performance, therefore, neither can be understood in terms of an offense against the religious feelings, since there was no physical contact with the crucifix at the central altar of the cathedral, nor is it interrupted an act of worship or produced material damage that may be considered to be violated the temple.
all in all, the judge criticized “the exacerbation grading” of the claimant, the Spanish Association of Christian Lawyers, who complains that argumentase “somewhat generic” the commission of the offences for which accused the activists.
This is the second occasion in which several Femen activists are acquitted. The first was in 2016 when the court acquitted five of the young people for having broken half-naked in a march antiabortista in Madrid in November 2013.
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