The Prosecutor's Office of the National Court has requested 50 years in prison for terrorism for Yassine Kanjaa, the jihadist who killed the sacristan Diego Valencia with a machete and seriously injured a priest during the attack he perpetrated against three churches in Algeciras (Cádiz), in January 2023. The public ministry maintains that the accused immersed himself in the most radical Islam and perpetrated his acts “with the aim of terrorizing Christians.” The indictment insists that when he was arrested, Kanjaa presented “a psychotic condition (…) with delusions”, as well as “an acute psychotic decompensation” that affected his volitional and intellectual capacities, but without canceling them. The prosecutor compares the attack in Algeciras with that perpetrated in the Basilica of Notre Dame in Nice (France), where a 21-year-old immigrant murdered three people with a knife, and the beheading of a priest who was celebrating mass in the parish church of Saint Etienne de Rouvray (France).
The public ministry makes a detailed overview of the attack that Kanjaa carried out starting at 6:30 p.m. on January 25, 2023, when he entered the church of San Isidro and, after asking a strange question to a praying person, took a Bible and hit it against a bank. Yassine left the temple around 6:45 p.m. shouting “the world is going to end” and “Allah,” and went home, where he turned off his mobile phone, grabbed “a large machete” and went from words to swords. .
First, while walking down the street, he punched a man in the face and broke his glasses, while yelling at him “you work for magic.” The attacked person escaped when he saw the machete. The accused returned to San Isidro, already with faca in hand, when mass was being celebrated for about 10 people. When the priest Antonio Rodríguez (he died in November last year after a long illness) confronted him to throw him out of the temple, Kanjaa chased him, threw him to the ground and caused an ugly wound with the knife on the back of his head.
Immediately afterwards, Kanjaa went to the church of La Palma, just 200 meters from the first, where he entered when the Eucharist was finishing and began to throw religious images, crucifixes and candles to the ground with the machete, going up to the altar of the temple. The sacristan of the temple, David Valencia, approached him at that time to ask him to leave the church, to which the suspect initially refused. When the Maghreb was leaving through the sacristy, he threatened two women and the religious again urged him to leave. At that moment, the attacker began to chase him, while stabbing him, until he caught up with him in the nearby Plaza Alta, where he gave him two strong blows with the cheira, one on the neck and another on the head.
The Public Ministry highlights that Kanjaa had “experienced a process of radicalization in the months prior to the attack, assuming the most rigorous theses of Islam”, those that defend the incompatibility of this religion with any other and the need to act to promote its elimination. and that of Muslims who do not follow the precepts of their religion.” In this way, Kanjaa “chose the places of his action, two temples of the Catholic Church” and attacked religious people “with the intention of causing their death and with the aim of terrorizing Christians.”
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The Prosecutor's Office recalls that Kanjaa had a psychotic condition that caused delusions and was probably schizophrenic. “At the time the events took place, he presented an acute psychotic decompensation with a significant degree of affective and behavioral involvement, which would very severely affect his volitional and intellectual capacities,” points out the prosecutor who, however, makes it clear that “his volitional capacities and intellectual abilities were not totally nullified by his illness.” However, the Criminal Chamber of the National Court determined that at the beginning of the oral trial it will be determined whether the accused is attributable or not due to his “psychological suffering.”
The public ministry is asking for 25 years in prison for the terrorist murder of the sexton, another 15 for an attempted murder and ten more for injuries.
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