“This was not a normal fight. It was a brutal beating by three attackers against a young man who could only defend himself with his arms and hands to prevent them from continuing to stab him.” This is a fragment from the statement of one of the two witnesses cited in the trial, whose hearing took place on Monday at the Provincial Court of Santa Cruz de Tenerife against three young men of Moroccan descent, charged with attempted homicide after repeatedly stabbing another compatriot who was travelling on the Tenerife tram in August 2024. The victim managed to survive, although the large scars left by the attackers on his face and neck will remind him of the assault every time he looks in the mirror.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office requested that each of the defendants be sentenced to ten years in prison. As all three defendants are in Spain illegally, it was proposed that, after serving part of their sentence, the remainder could be commuted with a deportation order. The defence was unable to contest the assault or argue that their clients were not involved, as a video showing the full sequence of the attack was presented, both inside one of the tram carriages and outside at the Las Mantecas stop. The clear footage shows how the assault unfolded and the weapon that was used just before ten o’clock on the 12th of August 2024.
However, the three lawyers suggested that their clients, if found guilty, should be charged with assault rather than aggravated homicide. One lawyer even argued that his client did not participate in the attack like the other two defendants. “He stayed at the door of the carriage, although he did join in with punches when the victim managed to exit the tram and was attacked at the stop.”
The “motive”
The three defendants claimed they attacked the victim because he had robbed them a few days earlier at a house they had occupied near the Las Mantecas stop. That evening, they had been drinking and taken pills and decided to take the tram to La Laguna to buy something for dinner. They argued that the meeting with the victim was coincidental. One of the defendants stated that the victim “was known for his violence” and “always carried knives.” He contended that it was the victim who brandished a knife that he managed to take from him, and then he and another accomplice punched him while the third remained at the tram door. He insisted that during the assault, while the victim attempted to flee to another carriage, the other accused who was with him took the knife and began to give the victim “scratches.” “I wasn’t stabbing him, just scratching him,” he defended.
However, one passenger who testified yesterday, after attempting to restrain one of the attackers to stop further assault on the victim, dismantled the defendants’ version. He asserted that “one of the attackers pulled out a small knife, like a peeler, while the other two held him.” He confirmed that he “remembered” identifying the assailants at the police station without any doubt. “One of them, who was the most aggressive and wore glasses, wielded the knife,” he maintained.
The accused identified, like the other two who had until that point used an interpreter to communicate in the courtroom, understood perfectly how the witness implicated him as the most violent and interrupted to deny that he was wearing glasses at that time, to which the witness retorted that he must have lost them during the fight, but was sure he had been wearing them. The presiding judge of the Fifth Section, Javier Mulero Flores, then intervened and ordered the defendant to be silent and the witness not to confront the accused. The truth is that, as the accused had previously stated, he “needs glasses” with a strong prescription to see, even up close. He admitted, when questioned by the prosecutor, that he had not been able to see clearly during the fight due to significant vision impairment.
The victim, who is currently in prison for other matters, testified while handcuffed, just like his attackers did. He claimed that he only vaguely recognised those who were now sitting in the dock for beating him last summer. His face was entirely marked by the scars from the attack, although when questioned by a defence lawyer about one of those wounds, he admitted that it was not inflicted by the defendants, but by another person he had fought with days prior to the tram attack.
