Spanish prosecutors are stepping up their investigations into hate crimes on social media after the country’s two main far-right parties – SALF and VOX – stepped up their attacks on African migrants following the killing of an 11-year-old boy over the weekend, although police later identified the perpetrator as a Spaniard.

Following the news that an 11-year-old boy was stabbed to death while playing in the central-southern municipality of Mocejón last Sunday, Alvise PerezLeader of the far-right SALF, VOX and other far-right minority groups, suspected – without having objective and verified data – that African immigrants, especially from the Maghreb, could be behind the crime, referring to Morocco.

However, on Monday (19 August), agents of the Spanish Guardia Civil (militarized police) arrested the perpetrator, who later confessed. He turned out to be a 20-year-old Spanish citizen who apparently suffered from severe mental disorders.

Following the rapid spread of false news that has helped fuel feelings of hostility towards immigrants, the Public Prosecutor’s Office announced that it would intensify its investigations into the hate messages circulating on social media platforms that criminalise foreigners – especially unaccompanied minor migrants – without objective data.

In an interview with a private radio station SER chain Miguel Ángel Aguilar, head of the hate crimes investigation department at the Spanish Public Prosecutor’s Office, proposed on Wednesday a reform of the Spanish penal code that would require people convicted of hate crimes on social media to be exempt from publishing their content for a certain period of time and that all users of these potentially criminal networks be fully identified.

Possible criminal charges against SALF and VOX

Sources in the Spanish public prosecutor’s office told Euractiv’s partner EFE that the Hate Crimes Unit of the Supreme Judicial Body is currently analyzing false reports spread through social media platforms in recent days to determine “how far they can go” in the event of possible prosecution against the authors of these racist and xenophobic “fake news.”

According to the same sources, their investigation – which is still at an early stage – focuses on hate messages spread mainly through social networks and directed “against minors (migrants) who do not have family in Spain”, that is, unaccompanied minors, often derogatorily referred to by the extreme right as “MENAS”.

The public prosecutor will investigate these messages, whose specific aim is to “arouse feelings of hatred, Hostility and discrimination against this group in the population.”

On Tuesday (20 August), Milagros Tolón, representative of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s government in the region of Castilla la Mancha (where Mocejón is located), indirectly accused VOX and SALF of spreading false news that Hatred against migrants.

Tolón criticized the “hate mongers” who had used the murder of an eleven-year-old as an opportunity to establish a connection between immigration and the killing.

The official also accused members of the far-right camp of taking advantage of the “human misfortune” of a child’s death to “let out all their hatred” on social networks and turn them into a “dumping ground for filth.”

(Edited by Daniel Eck)

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