A TWITTER user who championed the death of a policeman run over during a smuggling operation and wishing instant demise upon all other officers has been arrested and charged under Spain's hate speech laws.
Identified only by her initials of I.M.L.P., the 22-year-old's barely-literate rant targeted not only the National Police officer killed during a patrol car chase in La Línea de la Concepción (Cádiz province) involving smugglers who had crossed the Gibraltar border, but all other security forces in the country.
She wrote on Twitter that the officers involved in the chase were 'an embarrassment' and 'sons of b*****s', that it was not the smuggler's fault that their colleague had been killed, but that she 'was happy about' his death.
Next she tweeted that she 'hoped all police officers would die' because 'for all the use they are' she 'couldn't care less what people thought', and stated in very plain terms that she thought they were 'boot-lickers' – at least, this is the cleaned-up version.
Officers from the Specialist Crime and Violence Unit (UDEV) managed to trace the author of the insulting tweets, finding she was resident in the same town as the fatal police accident.
She was arrested and charged, but released pending trial.
About three weeks after the initial offending posts, I.M.L.P. tweeted an apologetic message.
“I managed to cause harm with my words without considering the consequences for [the deceased police officer's] loved ones,” she wrote.
“I only want to apologise as there are no excuses for my behaviour.
“Even though I was going through a bad time in my life, that's no excuse or reason or behaviour [sic] to say what I said.”
The policeman's death on June 7 marked a 'before and after' in Spain's war on contraband tobacco and drug smuggling from Gibraltar, and led to the ministry for the interior tightening up border controls.
La Línea de Concepción's local community was stunned and distressed by the tragedy, as the deceased was well-known in the town.
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