Several national police officers have individually reported insults, derogatory comments, and the dissemination of their personal data and photographs on forums and social networks following the case of Haitam, who died after an intervention in a call center in Malaga. The investigation is already underway to identify the people behind those profiles.
The complaints collect messages that could fit into hate crimes. In some accounts, agents are even called "murderers", in addition to disseminating images and personal information of several officials. The analysis of this material has been left in the hands of the Cybercrime Group, which will review both the published comments and the photographs in which the police officers are identified.
The case remains pending of the expert reports
The case is judicialized and the proceedings were provisionally archived while the definitive autopsy report and the complementary studies carried out on the samples sent to the National Institute of Toxicology and Forensic Sciences of Seville were incorporated.
The autopsy performed by forensic scientists from the Institute of Legal Medicine of Malaga concludes that Haitam died due to an adverse reaction to drugs in a state of agitated delirium, aggravated by a heart deteriorated by various pathologies. The toxicological analysis determined recent consumption of cocaine, in addition to MDMA, ketamine, and cannabis. He had also ingested alcohol, though not in a high quantity.
That same report specifies that the quantities of drug detected were not lethal by themselves and adds that these are concentrations frequently found in autopsies of habitual cocaine users.
In light of that conclusion, the specialist in Legal and Forensic Medicine Aitor Curiel, hired by the family, maintains in his expert report that Haitam suffered 86 injuries and argues that he would not have died at that moment had it not been for the polytrauma suffered during the restraint maneuvers and the electric shocks.
The recordings collect the entire intervention
The security cameras of the phone shop and the devices of the agents with taser guns recorded the complete sequence. The images place Haitam's entry into the establishment at 18.51. He appears very agitated and asking for a charger. He knocks down a protective grate next to the counter, struggles with the clerk until throwing him to the ground and accesses the area located behind the display case.
The owner of the premises came out shouting "thief", closed the door and called 112. In parallel, the 091 control room received notice of an alleged robbery with violence at the establishment and initially dispatched a patrol car with two officers.
For 11 minutes, Haitam remained alone inside the premises checking the counter in search of a charger. He was carrying two mobile phones, he plugged one of them into a store cable and did not take money from the cash register, which was open. In that interval he also took a pair of round-tipped scissors, which he kept next to the phones.
At 7:03 p.m. the first two police officers entered. One of them told him "Friend, get on the ground" and, referring to the taser, warned him "Are you seeing this?". The officers insisted that he drop the scissors and the cell phones and that he turn around. Haitam replied "I am going to cooperate."
The reduction and the use of the taser
After leaving the scissors, Haitam gave his hand to one of the agents. At that moment the police grabbed his wrist and began to handcuff him. When he began to writhe, up to four more agents entered the booth to subdue him.
He received the first electric shocks on his back. Afterwards he received a punch to the face and a new shock. At 19:08 he was handcuffed, although seconds later he received two more shocks after moving his legs and at the request of one of the agents.
One of the police officers would have sprayed him in the face and Haitam would have responded by spitting in his eye. Already on the ground, handcuffed and with an officer on his legs, he received another electric shock. In the recordings, phrases like "Are you calming down?" and "Shut up already, fuck" are heard.
Haitam was complaining and gasping. Minutes later he stopped being heard in the recordings.
Two reports with opposite conclusions on the injuries
The document from the Institute of Legal Medicine describes 19 injuries on the body. Of these, two would have been caused by the discharges of the taser gun used by the agents. The rest, according to those forensic conclusions, would correspond to the restraint maneuvers practiced by the officers.
Forensic experts also maintain that those injuries would not have endangered his life. That assessment clashes with the expert report provided by the family, which attributes a decisive role in the death to polytrauma and discharges, a discrepancy that remains at the center of the judicial procedure and also of the climate of tension now transferred to social media, where several agents have decided to take the step of reporting the messages and the public exposure of their personal data.