Rabat – The ex-military Spanish man who murdered Moroccan Younes Blal in June 2021 will stand trial before a popular judge at the Provincial Court of Murcia to confirm whether the crime was racially-motivated.
The Spanish man identified simply as “Carlos” shot Blal dead in public following a verbal dispute on a cafe terrace in Murcia in southeastern Spain. While he confessed to his crime, the 52-year-old man pleaded for the young Moroccan’s death to be classified as a “homicide’ rather than a murder and denied any racist motives behind the crime.
Spanish news outlet El Espanol released exclusive video footage of the statement that Carlos gave from Granada prison. “Carlos recounts with amazing calm some events that shocked the 33,000 inhabitants of this town on the Murcian coast,” said El Espanol.
The video shows Carlos denying the crime being racially motivated, claiming that he had “worked in the fields with Moroccans” and had “never had problems with racism.” The crime was “a huge mistake,” he added.
The Association of Moroccan Immigrant Workers (ATIM), as well as Spanish associations and political parties, denounced the xenophobic and racist murder of the young Moroccan man. The ATIM appealed for another trial to confirm that the murder was in fact a hate crime.
According to El Espanol, ATIM lawyer Antonio Plaza said that the association has come across this type of crimes, which are “xenophobic in nature.” He added that “we will request a murder hearing because he [the murderer] committed the crime with the victim’s absolute defenselessness, shooting at close range. In addition, we understand that the facts are also constitutive of a hate crime.”
CEPAIM foundation said that the perpetrator shouted publicly that he does not want “Moors” in Spain before shooting Blal. The foundation warned against racism and xenophobia in the world, recounting similar incidents, including the murder of African American George Floyd in the United States.
The 30-year-old victim Blal was a father to a son with Andrea Hidalgo del Valle, his Spanish girlfriend who became an anti-hate crime campaigner after the crime happened.
The barbaric and racist murder sparked outrage and shock among the Moroccan community in Spain and across the world.
Read also: Case of ‘Kidnapped’ Girl Reveals Remnants of Anti-Black Racism in Morocco
