THE WORLD and The Spanish They study taking legal action for illegal detention and false complaint against the National Police after two of its journalists were arrested while working to cover the Ferraz protests.
After a series of attacks occurred on Marqués de Urquijo Street, the journalists from EL MUNDO and EL ESPAÑOL They traveled accompanied by two other colleagues to cover the riots after the launching of firecrackers and police charges.
Once The protests moved to the neighboring Juan Álvarez de Mendizábal streetthe informants found themselves in the middle of two police charges that occurred after some people threw garbage cans on the ground, trying to build barricades. Both At that moment, detained reporters were recording how the radicals burned several containers in front of them. They also witnessed how some neighbors threw water at them from their windows. to avoid it, and the insults that the ultras directed at them from the street.
As the internal chats of both newspapers attest, The reporters were sending updates and information about what they saw in Ferraz to their respective media.. Also during the moments in which, according to the Police, they were supposedly throwing objects at the riot police.
Both journalists They were accompanied at all times by two other reporters from Pedro J. Ramírez’s newspaper, who witnessed that those arrested by the National Police only limited themselves to doing their job as journalists, without ever observing any violent attitude.
A scene at around 11:00 p.m. was the last that reporters were able to record and witness. Moments later, the two detained reporters dragged by the mass They saw the exit to take shelter from the load in the portal of a home, invited by one of its residents. At the same time, Both of them informed their companions that they were there, taking refuge from the charges..
The journalists observed in the company of the man who had allowed them to enter the portal (along with a citizen with Asian features and a protester who was also arrested) how The charges and arrests took place in the middle of the street.
Minutes later, an individual with his face covered by a panty began to bang hard on the door and demand that its residents open it. Then, the resident who had invited the journalists to take shelter asked the person outside who he was and, after stalling for a while, claimed to be a police officer without showing any type of identification. The resident of the building chose not to open it and went to his house.
The journalists waited on the landing next to the elevators for the riots to end. However, while the journalists waited, the man who had knocked on the door, accompanied by other people, entered the common areas of the building, identifying themselves as Police Officers.
An entry that was responded to by the journalists with their press cards and IDs in hand, informing the agents that they were reporters and that they were in the exercise of their profession. However, the police officers, specifically the one they had seen knocking on the door outside, in a violent and not calm manner shouted at them that they were under arrest and that “they already knew what they had done.”
In addition to showing their documentation and press cards, the journalists explained to the agents (without success) that they had personal protective equipment in their backpacks that also identified them as press or with stickers accrediting the investiture session in the Congress of the Deputies.
After being handcuffed, they were taken to the Leganitos police station and, from there, later to the Information Brigade in Moratalaz. There they were informed that they were being investigated for the commission of a crime of public disorder because the journalist allegedly “threw what appeared to be a bottle.” A fact that is recorded as observed by the agents who carried out his arrest. After spending the night at the Moratalaz Police Station, both journalists were released at 6 in the morning.
Both newspapers consider the denunciation and arrest of their reporters as an attack and a full-fledged violation of press freedom.