Juan Pablo Torroija, an Argentinian squatter living in the town of Girona (Catalonia), was arrested last month. A few hours after the arrest he ended up in hospital, where he died. According to police, he hanged himself in his cell, but the beaten marks on his body and the fact there was no fracture on his neck prove we may be in front of a new case of police torture and assassination. A gathering has been called for August 9 to demand explanations and denounce the killing. Below is a statement by comrades from Girona:
Juan Pablo, from what we could reconstruct, was arrested on July 10 or 11 at night by a joint patrol of local police and Mossos d’Esquadra (Catalan police) at the Noon street of Girona, although we don’t know why. He is wildly beaten and taken to a police station in town, and enters hospital on July 11, in severe condition.
According to police statements, Juan Pablo had tried to hang himself at the police station. Police never informed of his arrest and the following hospitalization neither to any relative nor the phone numbers listed in his legal residence in Spain, which means that Juan Pablo stayed four days alone while being heavily injured.
The only person who managed to find out what had happened was a friend of Juan Pablo, that turned up at the Vista Alegre police station (Girona) where they told him that Juan Pablo Torroija was admitted to the intensive care unit of the Trueta hospital for an alleged suicide attempt in the cells of that same police station. This friend managed to see Juan Pablo at the hospital and has now explained that he was brutally beaten on the head, the ribs of his left side, on both arms, on the legs and with all the his neck full of marks, as if they were traumas. All the beaten parts were covered by a white tape as a way to hide the injuries. No doctor wanted to give any explanations about the events, and they only told him he had irreversible damage by asphyxia and they believed he would not survive.
Juan Pablo died a day later (July 14), alone. His body was taken to the Mémora funeral home and given to the Court No 1 of Girona. Neither his family nor the Argentine Consulate or, obviously, the public opinion, were informed of his arrest and death.
We denounce the number of big irregularities in the process that ended up with the death of Juan Pablo, the lack of communication by the judicial authorities, the statements made by Juan Pablo’s friends, who report a situation of persecution, harassment, detention and torture in the police station, the evident irregularities in the autopsy presented and and the speed they have managed to the have the case closed, with the intention of having to repatriate the body. And we demand explanations, responsabilities to be clarified and the end of police impunity and state terrorism.
Not everyone is here: Juan Pablo is missing!
The police tortures and murders!
Stop police police immunity
One of us is touched, all of us are touched
Gathering – Thursday 9 at 20:00 in Vi square
For more information in English: The death of an Argentinian squatter
Source: barcelona.indymedia.org