A 56-year-old Moroccan woman, died in Fontcalent prison last week, less than a month after a Torrevieja court denied her provisional release on humanitarian grounds after she suffered a cardiac arrest while in prison.
After studying medical reports, the judge considered that there was “no risk to her health,” and her release was dismissed.
The woman had been in preventive detention since July 1 in the Alicante prison after an anti-drug operation in which her husband, son and six others were also arrested and imprisoned, by the Civil Guard.
Shortly after she was admitted, she was rushed to the ICU of a Alicante hospital after suffering a heart attack that almost cost her life. After her heart had stopped, medical staff then spent about twenty minutes carrying out cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
Following her heart attack, on 13 July, the inmate’s lawyer requested a Torrevieja court to grant to her provisional release on the understanding that she would report to the court every fifteen days as a precautionary measure. The lawyer alleged “purely humanitarian reasons” for the request “in the face of the damage the psychological and physical damage that was being caused to her” whilst in prison.
The petition also stated that returning her to prison after her time in Intensive Care did not provide for suitable convalescence and that “the mood of a person is also important when recovering from a serious illness.”
Likewise, the lawyer specified in his request that there was no risk of flight due to the health problems she suffered and because she has his entire family in Spain.
However, the titular magistrate of the Court of Instruction number 2 of Torrevieja issued an order, dated July 21, rejecting the request for freedom and kept the woman in prison.
The judge added in her resolution that according to the documentation provided by the hospital “it does not appear that her internment poses a risk to her health, given that she has since been treated from which she has recovered”. Therefore, the magistrate considered that the reasons were “more than sufficient to reject the request for release.”
The woman subsequently died last Saturday the 14th August in the hospital infirmary, although the causes of her death are not known at this time.
