The 10-year-old son of the 49-year-old woman arrested in Orihuela Costa as the alleged perpetrator of the violent death of her 45-year-old husband last week, ended his statement before the Court of Instruction Number 3 “exhausted and lying on the ground”, according to the defence which requested the annulment of the testimony.
The murder occurred in the early hours of last Friday in the presence of the couple’s children, aged 6, 8 and 10, in an isolated house on the Orihuela Costa where the family, of Norwegian nationality, had been living since May.
It was the woman who called 112, explaining that after being attacked and chased by her husband, she had stabbed him at least three times with a kitchen knife in self-defence. Since then, the three children have been in a shelter surrounded by unfamiliar people.
The eldest son, aged just 10, gave a statement last Monday, 72 hours after seeing his father dead and without knowing where or how his mother was, whom he last saw injured while being taken to hospital – she is currently in prison.
The defence lawyer, Juan Francisco Sánchez Otharán, from the Quiroga Sánchez law firm in Alicante, believes that “in an unfit mental state, he was pressured like an adult to talk when, from the beginning, he said he did not want to talk.” Thus, the defence continues, “he was in a state of psychological exhaustion that ended with him saying some things that were incoherent way until he ended up exhausted, lying on the ground.”
This is what the lawyer is saying in his request to the court to annul the statement so that it can be taken again, “this time with all the guarantees”. The letter to the court states that “the child was subjected to a police interrogation in which very obvious manipulation techniques were applied”.
The defence has said that there were ” numerous irregularities and violations of essential norms and fundamental rights”, including ” unwarranted pressure and insistence on him to make a statement “. Thus, for more than 15 minutes, “he was pressured by the police officer who conducted the interrogation seeking a statement, even though he was not obliged to give one and despite having stated on multiple occasions from the very beginning that he did not want to say anything”.
Sánchez Otharán stresses that the child must be clearly informed that he is not obliged to make a statement, although he can make one should he so wish. However, “he was forced” to the point that the child adopted a defensive position.
Within the first 10 minutes, the court’s document states that there was already a “weariness” in the evidence. At that point, the document continues, the judge called the police officer to see if the evidence should be stopped, instead of, as the investigating judge, stopping it himself, given that the minor had already repeated on numerous occasions that he did not want to testify.
Furthermore, the lawyer points out, the child had not been informed of the purpose of his statement until he had been questioned for 13 minutes, when the agent told him that he was not obliged to testify against his mother. However, he was pressed for at least 15 minutes.
“After all the pressure, the boy finally spoke, not because he wanted to, but because of the insistence of the officer who was questioning him, and because he was unaware of the significance of his statement, and that he had the option of not speaking,” argues the lawyer, who adds that he was asked ” biased questions , without giving the defence the opportunity to intervene or ask questions themselves.”
Neither was there any report assessing his psychological condition and was given an English interpreter when his mother tongue is Norwegian.
However, court sources say that the statement was made through specialists who considered that he could express himself better in English: “All guarantees and rights have been respected,” while insisting that “the child stopped the statement when he wanted to.” The same sources say that all documents will also be translated into Norwegian.
