The Supreme Court confirms a prison sentence for two civil guards who forced three young people to undress during a traffic stop

The Supreme Court has confirmed the sentence of one and a half years in prison and six years of disqualification of two civil guards who, during a traffic stop, ordered three young people to undress completely.

The order, according to the court, had “no justification” and the agents acted “absolutely gratuitously.”

The ruling states that "it is precisely this gratuitousness of the requirement of complete nudity that determines the objectification of those registered, the attack on their dignity, the humiliation that determines the typical conduct" of the attack on moral integrity, a crime for which they condemned by the Provincial Court of Segovia and which is now ratified by the Supreme Court.

The Criminal Chamber has rejected the appeals presented by the two convicted men and has confirmed the sentences, to which a mitigating circumstance of undue delays was applied because, due to an error in attributing jurisdiction to the case, it did not reach the Segovia Court until 2020. A third agent was acquitted.

The events occurred on June 13, 2014 on the AP-6, at the El Espinar toll (Segovia), heading towards Madrid.

The Civil Guard had deployed a selective identification control of vehicles and people, aimed at locating drugs, weapons and stolen objects.

Around 11:00, an officer stopped a car in which three boys and a girl were traveling.

After ordering them to get out of the vehicle, he performed a superficial body search on each of them.

The woman's case was done later because they had to notify a female agent.

The guard asked the three boys to go to the stairs of one of the islands where the toll booths and cashiers are located and, with the help of another agent, ordered them to take off their shoes, turn around the socks and lowered their pants and underpants.

When one of the young men refused, the guard threatened to arrest him, so the boy ended up agreeing.

He also ordered another of the car's occupants to lift his genitals.

The ruling of the Provincial Court deemed it proven that this way of being searched, “without sufficient reason and expressly contravening the action protocols,” caused the three young people “objective humiliation, which translated into feelings of shame and humiliation.” ”.

All these events were witnessed from the top of the stairs by the agent who was covering the actions of his partner and “despite this he did nothing to prevent it.”

The Supreme Court concludes that the agents acted with “absolute gratuitousness” and failed to comply with the instruction published in September 2005 by the Ministry of the Interior on the practice of personal search procedures by the Security Forces and Corps.

That instruction was replaced this year by another from the Secretary of State for Security that regulates the “comprehensive procedure of police detention”, although it maintains the content and essential guidelines of that one.

“Even if they are nudes seen by a person of the same sex, the gratuitousness of their practice, without justification, constitutes an act of relevant humiliation in relation to the protected legal good,” states the ruling, for which Judge Andrés was the rapporteur. Pigeon.

The judges highlight “the relevance of the humiliation” and that the agents acted with “abuse of their function, without any possible justification,” since no regulations authorized them to give that order.

The sentence condemns both the guard who addressed the young people directly and ordered the stripping and the agent who watched the events from the top of the stairs "and did nothing to prevent them."

The court rejects that, as his defense alleged, he did not commit any crime.

“It was enough, if he had a higher position than the other accused agent, for him to order him to stop this strip search;

and, if it was not, go to the agent who had operational command there, who, according to the proven story, was a third agent,” the judges conclude.