MADRID (Reuters) – Spain’s High Court has sentenced a 65-year-old safety guard to a seven-and-half-year jail time period for discussing assassinating Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on a far-right WhatsApp chat in 2018 and possessing unlawful weapons.
Manuel Murillo Sanchez was sentenced to two-and-a-half years for tried homicide and 5 years for possession of conflict weapons, a court docket doc launched on Tuesday mentioned. He was additionally prohibited from proudly owning firearms for the subsequent eight years.
He can attraction the sentence. His lawyer didn’t instantly return calls looking for remark.
In August 2018, Murillo provided to “seek out” Sanchez “like a deer and put his head on a chimney” after the Spanish authorities ordered former dictator Francisco Franco’s physique exhumed from a state mausoleum outdoors Madrid.
Even although Franco’s rule ended together with his loss of life in 1975, Spanish public opinion remains to be divided over the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War, which tore aside households and communities, and the legacy of the following dictatorship.
Over the previous 20 years, the makes an attempt of left-wing governments to eradicate the dictatorship’s remnants have prompted the ire of far-right fringe teams nostalgic for the period.
On the chats, Murillo additionally requested for assist to organise an assault and bragged in regards to the weapons he owned and his skill as a sharpshooter. “I’m a sniper and with an correct shot Sanchez is over,” he mentioned.
The judges dismissed Murillo’s defence that he was drunk when making these feedback. He has already spent two years in preventive custody between September 2018 and September 2020, when he was launched forward of the ruling.
(Reporting by Christina Thykjaer; Editing by Inti Landauro and Alex Richardson)
