A man who threatened to kill Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, and was in possession of a veritable arsenal when arrested in 2018, has been sentenced to 7 and a half years in prison, a Spanish court announced on Tuesday (April 12th).
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The National Audience, a court based in Madrid in particular responsible for terrorism cases, announced in a press release that it had sentenced to 7 years and 6 months in prison a security guard "
who had expressed in 2018 on social networks his intention to assassinate
" the socialist Pedro Sánchez, for crimes of preparation of homicide and possession of weapons of war.
To “
finish with the president of the government
”
Manuel Murillo Sánchez, 65, was part of a group on WhatsApp messaging in which he had repeatedly expressed "
his intention to finish with the president of the government
", in order to "
produce a change in the Spanish political situation
" .
, according to this press release.
To this end, "
he had undertaken to seek assistance
" to "
carry out
" his project, the court said.
In his messages, the man had expressed his indignation at the decision of the left-wing government led by Pedro Sánchez to exhume the remains of dictator Francisco Franco (1939-1975) from his mausoleum near Madrid to transfer them to a cemetery, an operation that finally took place in October 2019.
The National Court found that the man did not have "
a definite, planned and even less completed plan
" to carry out the assassination, but said he took into consideration "
the high level of danger
" linked to his "
determination
“, as well as the arsenal found at his home and the fact that he had been shooting for several years.
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When he was arrested in September 2018, the police found at his home in Terrassa, Catalonia (north-eastern Spain), "
numerous weapons and ammunition
", including an assault rifle, a homemade crossbow and "
a homemade pneumatic thruster
" to fire steel-tipped darts, according to the court's verdict, dated April 11.