Stop disinformation: Pablo Hasel is NOT in prison for rapping or insulting the Crown

@ElentirENG ES 2·21·2021 · 11:44 0

Spanish and foreign media are running a disinformation campaign about the imprisonment in Spain of the communist rapper Pablo Hasel.

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The falsehoods of Amnesty International and some media

This case is revealing the lack of rigor of media such as The Wall Street Journal, Euronews, SkyNews, the BBC and Ouest France, which are claiming that Pablo Hasel has been jailed for insulting the Monarchy and the Police. In addition, the organization Amnesty International has launched a campaign to support Hasel under the slogan "Rapping is not a crime", implying that the communist rapper has been jailed for singing. Perhaps because a part of the socialist-communist executive has a clear ideological affinity with Hasel, the Spanish government is doing nothing to counter this disinformation campaign that is being used to discredit Spain.

Pablo Hasel was sentenced to prison for apology of terrorism and assaults

To report rigorously on the causes of Hasel's imprisonment, we must review the crimes for which he has been convicted:

• In 2015, the Supreme Tribunal sentenced him to two years in prison for a crime of glorifying terrorism (see sentence here). The Tribunal indicated that Hasel published videos on YouTube with "expressions alluding to the terrorist organizations GRAPO, ETA, Al Qaeda, RAF, Terra Lliure and some of their members, in clear support for them and said terrorist organizations, exalting and praising their actions, justifying their existence, asking that they commit their terrorist actions again."
• In 2017 Hasel was convicted of a crime of resistance to authority. This crime is punishable by imprisonment from six months to three years when the accused "oppose serious resistance to the authority, its agents or public officials, or attack them, when they are in the exercise of the functions of their positions or on the occasion of they."
• In March 2018 Hasel was convicted once again by the National High Court for the crimes of glorifying terrorism, with the aggravating circumstance of recidivism, and insults and slander against the Crown and State institutions, this time for the content of 64 messages published in Twitter and a song on Youtube. The sentence (see PDF) indicated that of these three crimes, only the one of glorifying terrorism carried a prison sentence (of two years and one day), the other two crimes being punished with a fine.
• In July 2018, he was convicted of trespassing on a local. Article 203 of the Penal Code provides prison sentences for this crime, which can last up to three years if the offender used violence.
• In June 2020, Hasel was sentenced to six months in prison for assaulting a journalist, a fact happened in June 2016. Hasel pushed, insulted and sprayed the attacked person with cleaning fluid. In the same sentence, handed down by the Criminal Court number 1 of Lérida, he was also convicted of a crime of coercion.
• On June 15, 2020, the Criminal Court number 3 of Lérida sentenced Hasel to two and a half years in prison for assaulting the witness in a trial. This sentence was confirmed by the Provincial Court of Lérida in 2021, imposing on Hasel a new prison sentence of 2 and a half years for the crimes of obstruction of Justice, threats and mistreatment of work.

Thus, Hasel has been sentenced to prison terms for two crimes of glorification of terrorism and for two assaults on persons. He has not been sentenced to prison terms either for his insults to the Crown or for his insults to the State institutions (specifically the Police), crimes for which fines have been imposed. Likewise, it is flatly false that he was convicted of "rapping", as Amnesty International suggests. In Spain rapping is totally legal and many people dedicate themselves to it with total freedom. What is evident is that praising terrorism is still a crime to do it with music or rhyme.

The precedent of the conviction against two neo-nazi musical bands in Spain

In fact, it should be remembered that in January 2021 the members of two neo-Nazi musical bands were sentenced by the Supreme Court to prison terms for lyrics that included racist, xenophobic statements and incitement to violence against Democrats. No one affirmed then that "singing is not a crime" or that the crimes in question ceased to be so because they are transmitted through songs, so it is worth asking those who ask for freedom for Pablo Hasel if they are defending "freedom of speech" (which does not protect the exaltation and incitement of terrorist organizations to attack again) or if they are defending that a communist rapper is above the law by reason of his ideology, a radically undemocratic approach, since it collides with one of the pillars of all democracy: equality before the law.

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Photos: Pablo Hasel's Blog.