Spanish prosecutors seek prison for police officers accused of torturing gay Arab man

Two police officers from Catalonia, an autonomous region in northeast Spain, face possible prison sentences for allegedly detaining and torturing a gay Arab man in November 2021.

Spain’s Fiscalía de Odio, which prosecutes hate crimes, seeks nearly eight years of incarceration and 20,000 Euros in damages from the two men, whose names have not been released publicly, according to the Spanish newspaper El País. Fiscalía de Odio is a branch of Spain’s Ministerio Fiscal, which is similar to the Justice Department in the United States.

The officers allegedly detained the man after he got into an argument at a Barcelona nightclub, El País reported, placing him into a patrol car.

Prosecutors allege that one of the officers rode in the back seat with the man and physically abused him, while hurling homophobic and anti-Arab slurs at the man, according to Spain’s English-language newspaper The Olive Press. The man was then left on a Barcelona street.

The officers were arrested on August 5, 2022, but released from custody the same day, The Olive Press reported.

The officer who allegedly assaulted the man in the back seat is charged with torture and physical abuse, according to El País. The officer who drove the car is charged with torture by omission, a crime where a public official fails to stop torture under their watch, and illegal detention with a discriminatory motivation.

Anti-LGBTQ+ hate is on the rise in Spain. Earlier this year, the Federación Estatal de Lesbianas, Gays, Trans, Bisexuales, Intersexuales — one of Spain’s preeminent LGBTQ+ rights groups — reported that anti-LGBTQ+ assaults had nearly tripled in just two years.

Spain’s Ministry of the Interior also reported that hate crimes against LGBTQ+ residents rose by 30 percent between 2020 and 2024, according to The Olive Press.

Likewise, anti-Arab and anti-immigrant hate is reportedly on the rise in Catalonia, which has the largest Muslim population in Spain. A new pro-independence party on the far right, Alianca Catalana, has openly targeted Islam and immigration, according to Al Jazeera.