Eduardo González
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will again grant 30,000 euros for legal assistance to Spanish citizens facing death sentences around the world during the 2025 financial year. There is currently only one Spanish citizen on death row: Ahmed el Saadany Ghaly, sentenced in Egypt in 2017 for the murder of his brother-in-law. His situation “has not changed” and he continues to “receive consular assistance,” according to Foreign Affairs sources who spoke to The Diplomat.
According to the Order, signed on April 9 by the Director General for Spaniards Abroad and Consular Affairs, Carolina de Manueles Álvarez, and published this Thursday in the Official State Gazette (BOE), the purpose of the subsidies is to provide financial aid to assist with the legal defense of Spanish citizens facing trial abroad for crimes punishable by death under applicable law.
These subsidies may also be used in the review or retrial process, in appeals against convictions, or in applications for pardon or commutation of sentence for those already sentenced to death. The beneficiaries of these grants are the individual of Spanish nationality facing the death penalty and other individuals, Spanish or foreign, or institutions with private legal personality, domiciled in Spain or abroad.
The government’s contributions in this area began in 2009, when, for the first time in history, the General State Budget included a budget item (in the section corresponding to Foreign Affairs) of no less than 500,000 euros “for assistance to citizens facing the death penalty.”
That initial amount, however, was radically cut in August 2009 (in the midst of the international crisis) by the government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, leaving it at just 60,000 euros. Since then, the trend has been downward or, at least, stagnant: 50,000 euros in 2010, 60,000 euros in 2011, and 30,000 euros annually since 2012. Until 2017, the funds earmarked for this purpose were awarded to the defense of Pablo Ibar, whose death sentence, handed down in 2000 by a Florida court, was overturned in February 2016 by that state’s Supreme Court and commuted to life imprisonment in the second trial, which concluded in May 2019.
In 2017, the funds were split between Ibar and Artur Segarra, who was sentenced to death in Thailand in April of that year for the premeditated murder of David Bernat, another Spanish businessman. In August 2020, the King of Thailand commuted Segarra’s death sentence to life imprisonment.
Ahmed el Saadany Ghaly
Therefore, at this time, only the case of Ahmed el Saadany Ghaly remains open. He is a Spanish national (he lived in Spain for almost twenty years). He was imprisoned in Egypt (his country of origin) for the murder of his brother-in-law in December 2016 and sentenced to death by hanging in 2017. Several sources have confirmed that he did not have the assistance of a lawyer during the trial and, according to Amnesty International, “was tortured and threatened with torture against his family.”
The Spanish government has repeatedly asked the Egyptian authorities to commute his death sentence. According to sources from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who spoke to The Diplomat on Thursday, Ghaly’s situation “has not changed” and the Spanish-Egyptian citizen continues to “receive consular assistance.”
Aside from Ibar and Segarra, several Spaniards have escaped the death penalty in recent years. The most recent and high-profile case was that of Daniel Sancho, son of actor Rodolfo Sancho, who was sentenced to life imprisonment (thus avoiding the death penalty) in Thailand for the premeditated murder of a Colombian surgeon.
Also spared from the death penalty were Nabil Manakli, a Spaniard of Syrian origin convicted of terrorism in Yemen in 2003 and for whom King Juan Carlos himself interceded; and Francisco Larrañaga, whose father was Spanish and mother was Filipino, convicted in 2004 for kidnapping, rape, and murder and whose life was saved thanks to the abolition of the death penalty in the Philippines (he is currently imprisoned in Spain).
Another highly publicized case was that of Joaquín José Martínez, the first Spaniard to be released from death row in the United States. He was sentenced to capital punishment for double murder and ultimately acquitted in 2001 after an intense campaign in his favor in Spain. Other Spaniards who escaped death row in the United States include Richard Anthony Meissner, the son of an American father and a Spanish mother, sentenced to death in 1995 for homicide and ultimately sentenced to life in prison; and Julio Mora, an elderly man from the Canary Islands sentenced to death in 1998 for murder who was spared execution in 2002 after the Florida Supreme Court decided to annul the trial due to “judicial irregularities and mental health problems.”
