SPAIN has stepped up to help Morocco after a devastating earthquake left nearly 2,500 dead, and numerous organisations have given details of how to donate aid.
Diana Quer’s dad hands in 3.2 million signatures to Parliament
21/03/2019
DIANA Quer’s father went to the national Parliament building today (Thursday) to hand-deliver the petition he set up on Change.org calling for permanent but reviewable prison sentences to remain part of Spanish law.
He brought print-outs of the petition signatures in boxes – 2.8 million in total via the site, and another 400,000 hand-signed, or 3.2 million overall.
The introduction of ‘permanent reviewable prison’ means an offender will not be released unless and until he or she is fully rehabilitated – it does not necessarily translate as a life sentence, but it can if the criminal in question is never again considered safe enough to release into the community.
Left-wing party Podemos, Spain’s third-largest political force, and the reigning socialists wanted to axe this option, which would mean the maximum term of 30 years would apply – and this usually ends up being less if the offender earns early-release days as credit for carrying out jobs whilst inside.
Diana’s rapist and killer, Enrique Abuín, wrote to his family from custody after his arrest on December 30, 2017 to ‘reassure’ them that he would ‘be out within seven years’.
Yet, just 15 months after Diana’s disappearance whilst walking back from the fiestas in A Pobra do Caramiñal (A Coruña province, Galicia) to the family’s holiday home on the night of August 22, 2016, Abuín staged another attempted kidnap in near-identical circumstances.
On this occasion, the 32-year-old Ecuadorian woman’s screams were heard by passers-by who rescued her just as the would-be killer was forcing her into the boot of his car.
The search for 18-year-old Diana, who lived in the up-market Madrid commuter town of Pozuelo de Alarcón during term time and in A Pobra over the summer months, was largely based upon finding the sixth-former alive, having either run away from home or being held against her will.
But police had Abuín under the spotlight and his attempted kidnap on Christmas Day 2017 led to his arrest and the subsequent discovery of Diana’s body in a well on an industrial estate in Rianxo, 15 kilometres from her holiday home, on New Year’s Eve.
She had been grabbed from behind and knocked to the ground whilst distracted sending WhatsApp messages on her phone, dragged into the boot of Abuín’s car, tied up with plastic parcel strips and gagged with duct tape.
Some 25 minutes later, after which Abuín had thrown her mobile phone into the river Arousa, she was let out in the basement of a dark, disused warehouse scattered with dirty, discarded mattresses.
Abuín tore off her clothes, which he later dumped several kilometres away, and raped her for over an hour before strangling her with a plastic parcel strip with such force that it broke her neck.
He then threw her body in the well and, a week later, returned and tied adobe blocks to her hands and feet to prevent her floating to the surface, and covered the hole with a manhole cover.
Her father Juan Carlos Quer said: “I have to tell you that, when you’re dealing with the pain of your own daughter being brutally murdered, you do one of two things: you cry, or you try to change things.”
He insists that the call for permanent prison not to be axed is independent of political values, but merely ‘common sense’ and ‘necessary’ to protect ‘women and young people’.
Quer, whose ex-wife and Diana’s mother, Diana Cristina López-Pinel, and their daughter Valeria, now 19, have been campaigning alongside him, referred to the 26-year-old teacher from Zamora, Laura Luelmo, who was kidnapped, raped and murdered in December soon after moving to Huelva to take up a new job in a school.
The murder suspect, Bernardo Montoya, reportedly pleaded recently for authorities not to let him out of prison for the rest of his life, since he knew he would rape and murder again and again if he was ever free.
“Educating and only educating is not always enough, and serving the full sentence is not always, as the progressive political parties say, a guarantee that the offender is rehabilitated,” Quer said.
“Permanent and reviewable prison is a necessary sentence, which is why it is legal in the most evolved countries in Europe, since it’s a guarantee of protection for women and young people from criminals, rapists and murderers who would otherwise be released into the community without being properly rehabilitated first.”
Quer insists that he is not, as Podemos and the socialists have hinted, ‘seeking revenge’ for his daughter’s death – he does not agree with the death penalty or with ‘life-means-life’ imprisonment, and ‘would be the first to support’ the release of Enrique Abuín if he was ever completely rehabilitated, even though his repeat offending and lack of remorse does not indicate he is likely to be.
Diana’s father says the very parties which wanted to abolish permanent reviewable prison also claim to be ‘feminist’ political teams and to be working hard for equality for women, and that the sentence he and the rest of Diana’s family are fighting to keep in force goes hand in hand with feminism.
The campaign has been fully endorsed by other parents whose children were murdered, including two mothers whose small kids were killed by their fathers during access visits, the dad of a five-year-old girl murdered by a paedophile, and the parents and grandparents of 17-year-old Marta del Castillo Casanueva who was killed by her ex-boyfriend Miguel Carcaño, then aged 20, in Sevilla just over 10 years ago.
“Just as we have a law dealing with gender violence, we also need laws that protect women and children and prevent there being more victims, and resources need to be channelled into that purpose,” Quer told reporters outside Parliament.
Spain is statistically one of the world’s safest countries with one of the lowest violent crime rates, and the vast majority of cases of violence are committed by people in the victim’s closest circle rather than as, in Diana Quer’s case, by a total stranger.
For that reason, lone women in Spain generally feel safe walking at night, and neither Diana Quer nor her parents would have thought twice about her making the two-kilometre journey back from the fiestas at 02.00 on a Sunday morning.
Photograph: Change.org
Related Topics
DIANA Quer’s father went to the national Parliament building today (Thursday) to hand-deliver the petition he set up on Change.org calling for permanent but reviewable prison sentences to remain part of Spanish law.
He brought print-outs of the petition signatures in boxes – 2.8 million in total via the site, and another 400,000 hand-signed, or 3.2 million overall.
The introduction of ‘permanent reviewable prison’ means an offender will not be released unless and until he or she is fully rehabilitated – it does not necessarily translate as a life sentence, but it can if the criminal in question is never again considered safe enough to release into the community.
Left-wing party Podemos, Spain’s third-largest political force, and the reigning socialists wanted to axe this option, which would mean the maximum term of 30 years would apply – and this usually ends up being less if the offender earns early-release days as credit for carrying out jobs whilst inside.
Diana’s rapist and killer, Enrique Abuín, wrote to his family from custody after his arrest on December 30, 2017 to ‘reassure’ them that he would ‘be out within seven years’.
Yet, just 15 months after Diana’s disappearance whilst walking back from the fiestas in A Pobra do Caramiñal (A Coruña province, Galicia) to the family’s holiday home on the night of August 22, 2016, Abuín staged another attempted kidnap in near-identical circumstances.
On this occasion, the 32-year-old Ecuadorian woman’s screams were heard by passers-by who rescued her just as the would-be killer was forcing her into the boot of his car.
The search for 18-year-old Diana, who lived in the up-market Madrid commuter town of Pozuelo de Alarcón during term time and in A Pobra over the summer months, was largely based upon finding the sixth-former alive, having either run away from home or being held against her will.
But police had Abuín under the spotlight and his attempted kidnap on Christmas Day 2017 led to his arrest and the subsequent discovery of Diana’s body in a well on an industrial estate in Rianxo, 15 kilometres from her holiday home, on New Year’s Eve.
She had been grabbed from behind and knocked to the ground whilst distracted sending WhatsApp messages on her phone, dragged into the boot of Abuín’s car, tied up with plastic parcel strips and gagged with duct tape.
Some 25 minutes later, after which Abuín had thrown her mobile phone into the river Arousa, she was let out in the basement of a dark, disused warehouse scattered with dirty, discarded mattresses.
Abuín tore off her clothes, which he later dumped several kilometres away, and raped her for over an hour before strangling her with a plastic parcel strip with such force that it broke her neck.
He then threw her body in the well and, a week later, returned and tied adobe blocks to her hands and feet to prevent her floating to the surface, and covered the hole with a manhole cover.
Her father Juan Carlos Quer said: “I have to tell you that, when you’re dealing with the pain of your own daughter being brutally murdered, you do one of two things: you cry, or you try to change things.”
He insists that the call for permanent prison not to be axed is independent of political values, but merely ‘common sense’ and ‘necessary’ to protect ‘women and young people’.
Quer, whose ex-wife and Diana’s mother, Diana Cristina López-Pinel, and their daughter Valeria, now 19, have been campaigning alongside him, referred to the 26-year-old teacher from Zamora, Laura Luelmo, who was kidnapped, raped and murdered in December soon after moving to Huelva to take up a new job in a school.
The murder suspect, Bernardo Montoya, reportedly pleaded recently for authorities not to let him out of prison for the rest of his life, since he knew he would rape and murder again and again if he was ever free.
“Educating and only educating is not always enough, and serving the full sentence is not always, as the progressive political parties say, a guarantee that the offender is rehabilitated,” Quer said.
“Permanent and reviewable prison is a necessary sentence, which is why it is legal in the most evolved countries in Europe, since it’s a guarantee of protection for women and young people from criminals, rapists and murderers who would otherwise be released into the community without being properly rehabilitated first.”
Quer insists that he is not, as Podemos and the socialists have hinted, ‘seeking revenge’ for his daughter’s death – he does not agree with the death penalty or with ‘life-means-life’ imprisonment, and ‘would be the first to support’ the release of Enrique Abuín if he was ever completely rehabilitated, even though his repeat offending and lack of remorse does not indicate he is likely to be.
Diana’s father says the very parties which wanted to abolish permanent reviewable prison also claim to be ‘feminist’ political teams and to be working hard for equality for women, and that the sentence he and the rest of Diana’s family are fighting to keep in force goes hand in hand with feminism.
The campaign has been fully endorsed by other parents whose children were murdered, including two mothers whose small kids were killed by their fathers during access visits, the dad of a five-year-old girl murdered by a paedophile, and the parents and grandparents of 17-year-old Marta del Castillo Casanueva who was killed by her ex-boyfriend Miguel Carcaño, then aged 20, in Sevilla just over 10 years ago.
“Just as we have a law dealing with gender violence, we also need laws that protect women and children and prevent there being more victims, and resources need to be channelled into that purpose,” Quer told reporters outside Parliament.
Spain is statistically one of the world’s safest countries with one of the lowest violent crime rates, and the vast majority of cases of violence are committed by people in the victim’s closest circle rather than as, in Diana Quer’s case, by a total stranger.
For that reason, lone women in Spain generally feel safe walking at night, and neither Diana Quer nor her parents would have thought twice about her making the two-kilometre journey back from the fiestas at 02.00 on a Sunday morning.
Photograph: Change.org
Related Topics
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