The singer Morad accepted a two-year prison sentence this Wednesday for encouraging riots and attacking local police in the La Florida neighborhood of L'Hospitalet (Barcelona), the inspiration for the lyrics of his songs and the setting for his video clips.
The Prosecutor's Office initially requested a sentence of six and a half years in prison for a crime of incitement to commit public disorder and another of attacking authority with the use of a dangerous instrument.
The rapper's agreement with the prosecution implies that he recognizes the facts and pays the corresponding compensation (2,000 euros) and, in exchange, achieves a substantial reduction in the sentence that will prevent him from entering prison.
With the sentence of conformity, which has been dictated out loud and is now final, Morad releases ballast on one of the many judicial fronts that he keeps open, and that threaten to lead him to jail.
The majority, like this one for which he has now been convicted, are linked to confrontations with the police and episodes of public order in Blocs Florida Square, the landscape of the video clips that made him popular and helped make him one of the kings of the urban music in Europe.
In October 2022, a judge decided to provisionally prohibit him from entering the neighborhood, arguing that his presence could cause disturbances.
The events that Morad has now accepted occurred on August 11, 2021. The singer and his team, with the participation of about 150 young people from the neighborhood, were recording one of their video clips on the street, together with the French rapper Rim'K.
He had not requested a municipal permit and was using a drone.
Neighbors complained about the noise and several Urban Police patrols arrived at the scene.
The agents were greeted with insults and the throwing of eggs and stones.
Morad El Khattouti El Hormi addressed the children of La Florida with expressions such as “the street is ours” and also rebuked the police officers: “You have no business here.”
The agents told Morad that he should stop the recording because he did not have permits, but he refused with “hostile and obstructive” behavior.
“If you continue appearing in the square, this will end badly,” he told them, according to the Prosecutor's indictment that has been assumed by the singer.
The rapper acted as an “instigator” and “incited and spurred” the protesters, to whom he gave instructions to attack the agents: “Your aim is up your ass, you're going to hit my car.”
He himself, according to the sentence that is now final, was one of those who threw “large eggs and stones” at the police officers.
None of the officers were injured in the confrontation.
The attack, however, did cause damage to patrol cars and other vehicles worth around 2,000 euros.
Morad has paid the compensation requested by the Prosecutor's Office, which has allowed the mitigation of reparation for damage to be applied and the sentence initially requested to be reduced.
During the oral hearing at the Barcelona Court, which lasted just 10 minutes, Morad sat in a white tracksuit in the dock and stood up only to say “yes” to accepting the sentence in accordance.
No more crimes in two years
The court has already announced that it will accept the request of Morad's defense, carried out by criminal lawyer Fernando Martínez, that the prison sentence be suspended: neither the overall sentence nor any of the two separate crimes exceeds two years in prison, and Morad's background, which has to do with a crime against road safety, does not count when deciding whether to suspend the sentence.
The Prosecutor's Office has not opposed the suspension of the execution of the sentence, but with the condition that he does not commit another crime during the next two years and that he pays a fine of 900 euros.
Morad's judicial horizon is far from being clear.
He has several open judicial processes, and others that he is closing with the payment of fines.
The most serious of all of them is due to events that occurred just a month before those that have now led to his conviction (July 2011) and in the same setting: the La Florida neighborhood.
The Prosecutor's Office is asking for six years in prison for “intimidating” two Mossos d'Esquadra agents with an electric defense.
In an interview with this newspaper published on Tuesday, the singer insisted that he was going to defend his innocence in the larger judicial processes that were to come.
In his defense brief on the incitement to riots in Florida, he denied having “incited or instigated” the people who were gathered to disturb public order, “much less to throw objects at local police officers.” ”.
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