Legionaries in the parade on October 12 in the Patio de la Armería of the Royal Palace of Madrid.Kiko Huesca / EFE
The family of Alejandro Jiménez Cruz, the 21-year-old legionnaire who died on March 25, 2019 during maneuvers with live fire at the Agost (Alicante) shooting range, has requested that the cause ordered by the Almería military court go to civil jurisdiction.
Last August, the military judge prosecuted the sergeant who fired the shot as the alleged perpetrator of a crime against the efficiency of the service resulting in death.
In addition, he prosecuted a captain, two lieutenants, a corporal and three soldiers for the alleged crimes of concealment, disloyalty, disobedience and obstruction of justice, as they tried to cover up what happened.
However, the private prosecution considers that the sergeant who killed Alejandro Jiménez with a shot from his HK36 rifle, as the expert reports of the Civil Guard have shown, did not commit a crime of serious recklessness, but rather a crime of murder or, in its defect, of intentional homicide.
The brief alleges that, “given the sergeant's qualification and vast experience in live fire practice”, it cannot be thought that he was not aware of the great risk involved in his conduct (he improvised an exercise on the fly when the planned one had already concluded and did at least seven abacanico shots towards the area where the deceased was, despite the fact that he should not open fire), so there is no question of mere recklessness.
The sergeant denied that he had fired and did not hand over his weapon to the Civil Guard, but the projectile was lodged inside the body and this allowed, after a double autopsy, to determine its origin.
The classification of the facts as murder or intentional crime leads the private prosecution to raise a conflict of jurisdiction and demand that the military judge restrain himself in favor of ordinary justice.
The Military Procedural Law establishes that the military courts can only understand those crimes that are exclusive to the Military Penal Code (such as desertion, disobedience, etc.) or that, also appearing in the common, have a higher penalty in the first.
However, alleges the lawyer for the victim's family, the Military Penal Code only contemplates death due to gross negligence during the execution of a weapons service.
"The classification of the facts by the public or private prosecution as intentional homicide or murder inevitably entails the lack of competence of the military criminal jurisdiction and the consequent inhibition in favor of the ordinary criminal jurisdiction," the brief concludes.
