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A MAN who hacked a church worker to death with a machete in southern Spain has been cleared of terrorism charges after a court instead ruled that the bloody rampage was spurred on by a ‘psychotic break’.
Yassin Kajaa, a Moroccan national, killed Diego Valencia (74), the church sexton in an attack on January 20, 2023.
The Madrid National Court has today dismissed an appeal filed jointly by the Public Prosecutor’s Office with the family of the murdered sacristan.
The court upheld a ruling from the November verdict that Kanjaa was not charged with terrorism due to his psychiatric disorder.
Kanjaa’s crimes will be punished by a maximum of 30 years confinement at a prison mental facility.
The court said that appeal courts were only allowed to note errors in the evaluation of evidence or omissions in key facts. In this case, neither occurred.
This meant that judges had no choice but to confirm last year’s decision, which found that the defendant was unable, due to mental illness reasons, to demonstrate the intent necessary to qualify for terrorism charges.
This includes inciting a state terror or disrupting the public peace which, according to the judges, did not occur.
READ MORE: Appeal to have a local jury try an alleged Islamist accused of attacking churches and killing a sexton in Spain’s Algeciras is rejected
The original judgement found that Kanjaa suffered from ‘an acute psychotic disorder of a schizophrenic type, with a significant degree of emotional and behavioural impairment, delusional ideas of persecution and messianism, with experiences of control and influence and delusion interpretations that very severely affected his intellectual and volitional faculties’.
It added, “The delusion caused him to lose his perception of reality. He was also unable to control his impulses.”
The horrific attack began in 2023 when Kanjaa entered San Isidro Church and encouraged the congregation to convert.
He returned with a Machete and began destroying Christian images, before attacking local Priest Antonio Rodriguez.
The priest was stabbed in the neck and shoulder before he left and made his way to La Palma Church, 200 metres away.
He continued to smash property before attacking Valencia outside the Plaza Alta, where he then stabbed him and beat him to death.
Three other people were injured while trying to rescue the sexton.
Kanjaa was arrested quickly by the police. He had been living in Spain without permission since 2019.
He had previously been living in a squat with other undocumented immigrants, who described him as ‘violent and unstable’.
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