The defendants from the 'Los Suecos' clan now admit that they participated in two murders on the Costa del Sol

Room of the Provincial Court of Malaga, where the trial is held against the four accused of two crimes of murder on the Costa del Sol in 2018, this Monday. Daniel Pérez (EFE)

The so-called

has admitted this Friday its participation in the murder of two people in Marbella in 2018. The main defendant, Ahmed Abdul Karim, has acknowledged that in May of that year he shot David Ávila, Maradona

while he left his son's communion and got into a car with his wife and a friend.

And that three months later, in August, he also caused the death of Soufian Mohamed by shooting in front of his house in Estepona.

"Yes, it is correct", he has answered the six questions asked by the prosecutor, Carlos Tejada.

The rest of the defendants have also accepted his participation in the events to a greater or lesser extent, something that they had flatly denied until now.

The four considered perpetrators faced permanent reviewable prison and the four accomplices to twelve years in prison, sentences that will be reduced by the confession itself and, also, by the payment of compensation to the relatives, according to legal sources.

The trial will continue in the coming days in an express version,

The defenses have spent the first three sessions of the trial —from Tuesday to Thursday— defending the absolute innocence of their clients.

They stressed the lack of indications and evidence that linked them to the crimes and even located them outside the scene of the events.

The main defendants had been drawn as young people raised in a troubled environment in Malmö (Sweden) who had escaped a spiral of violence to find a life on the Costa del Sol, either as hashish dealers or by starting up a restaurant in Nueva Andalucía, in Marbella, but who had been singled out for the color of their skin.

The rest, in principle, had nothing to do with it: two were simply in charge of moving from Sweden to Spain at the beginning of 2018,

another a cook looking for an opportunity in Malaga and the last an exemplary grandmother respected in her quiet community who did not even know how to use the internet.

Until this Friday everything has changed.

The session has started two hours late due to the dialogue between the parties.

The agreement, which the defenses have been seeking at least since yesterday, has not yet arrived nor are its conditions known, but the recognition of the facts by all the defendants is an indication that it is on the right track.

If the previous ones had passed slowly, this day has been fleeting.

In less than half an hour and 21 questions in total, the eight defendants have responded to the prosecutor —the only one who has addressed their questions to them, because both the private prosecution and the defenses have refused to ask them— to recognize the facts as stated, precisely, the prosecution.

In one way or another, the confessions have underpinned the hypothesis that the researchers had from the beginning:

The first shift has been for Ahmed Abdul Karim.

With a light blue shirt, gray jeans and dark sneakers, the Swedish defendant has walked firmly to his place.

There, he has answered three questions regarding the first crime and another three about the second.

The statement has always been the same: "Yes, that's right."

That is to say, that there were "serious disagreements, confrontations and enmity" between him and David Ávila and that before his death they had an argument.

And that on May 12, 2018, when the victim got into the car after his son's communion in the church of the Virgen del Rocío in San Pedro Alcántara (Marbella), he shot him to death, and then escaped on a motorcycle White Yamaha T-Max 500 to the Cortijo del Mar urbanization, in Estepona, where he hid it in the garage.

Also that between him and Soufian Mohamed there were also serious disagreements and confrontations for personal reasons and that in the early morning of August 20, 2018 he went to his home on a bicycle, hid among the containers, waited for him to arrive at his house and when minutes later he came out again went to meet him and fired between eight and new shots that ended his life.

Then, he fled with his bike to the Cortijo del Mar urbanization, in the surroundings of which he left the vehicle.

None of the defenses of the eight defendants or the private prosecution wanted to delve into the details.

"Yeah that's right"

To his brother Karim Abdul Karim —who is serving a 34-year prison sentence for placing two explosive devices in Marbella and Benahavís in 2018— the prosecutor has only asked one question: if he helped Ahmed hide the motorcycle in the urbanization .

"Yes, it's correct", he has also answered.

Exactly the same thing that Fahkry Mekky has admitted.

For his part, the fourth member of Los Suecos, and whom the police have always considered their ringleader ("nothing was done without him knowing," sources from the investigation told this newspaper), Amir Mekky, has admitted, with the same words, that on August 20, 2018, he was with the victim of this murder in Puerto Banús for several hours to distract him because he knew that this would help him to be murdered later.

Meanwhile, the other four defendants, who are being asked for 12 years in prison as accomplices, have also admitted the facts.

One for reserving the motorcycle with which the first murder was committed knowing that it was going to be used for illegal activities online, two of them for purchasing in Germany and moving to Marbella knowing its future use and one more for providing his identity to rent a car on the Costa del Sol that was also going to be used to commit the acts, in addition to throwing some garbage bags into a container in which he knew there were various electronic devices used by the clan.

In this way, only one of the defendants has recognized the two crimes while the rest have admitted their participation —more or less close— in only one of them, so their sentences will be far from the reviewable permanent prison that was requested. for four of them.

Both the confession and the payment to the next of kin of an amount —unknown at the moment and which is expected to be consigned in the short term— will serve to reduce the penalties.

Of course, the trial will continue next Monday.

It has been an effort by the prosecutor so that the popular jury can know how the deaths really occurred.

Something that will be done with only the main evidence and testimonies, as all parties have agreed to facilitate the agenda of the process.

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