The Prosecutor's Office asks for two years in prison for the racist insults of a fan to Iñaki Williams in the Espanyol field in 2020

The Hate Crimes Prosecutor asks for two years in prison for an Espanyol fan accused of uttering racist insults to humiliate and belittle Athletic Bilbao striker Iñaki Williams in a League match at the Cornellá-El Prat stadium in January 2020.

In his brief of provisional conclusions, the prosecutor attributes to the accused a crime against fundamental rights and public liberties, in his modality of injuring the dignity of people for racist reasons and against moral integrity, for which he also asks for a fine. of 5,475 euros and that during the five years after the prison sentence he cannot enter any football stadium or teach sports and free time.

The League denounced at the time before the Prosecutor's Office the alleged racist insults against Iñaki Williams and exercised private prosecution.

When Iñaki Williams was substituted, he received boos and "manifestations of contempt", such as simulating the gestures of primates and repeated cries "uh, uh, uh, uh", onomatopoeia that imitates the sound made by monkeys.

The boos came from a part of the blue and white stadium located in sector 108 of the stands, where the accused was.

In his brief, the prosecutor for hate crimes in Barcelona, ​​Miguel Ángel Aguilar, maintains that these sounds imitating monkeys, as is "public and notorious", have been made on several occasions by groups of fans from different countries "to offend black soccer players publicly during the course of a soccer match”.

In March of last year, Willams assured the judge, in his statement by videoconference during the investigation phase, that he felt "humiliated" by the racist insults and that he is outraged that acts of this nature continue to occur in the 21st century.

In fact, the prosecutor emphasizes that the racist insults occurred before the 27,318 attendees who had come to the blue and white stadium and before a television audience estimated at almost 210,000 spectators, in addition to a "massive" number of listeners who could hear them on the radio.

In its brief, the Prosecutor's Office requests that the case be filed for a second defendant for these racist chants, since in his case during the investigation insufficient evidence of criminality on his part has been obtained.

An investigation was also commissioned to the Mossos d'Esquadra, which managed to identify the alleged perpetrators of the insults after examining the images from the security cameras and thanks to the information provided by the RCD Espanyol on the owners of the towns where the insults came from. Screams.

The police investigations allowed the identification of three followers allegedly related to the racist insults, the two mentioned above and a third, who was a minor.

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