The Supreme Court has let free a Legionary Corporal and his wife, also a Legionary, who were sentenced to six months in prison for "disloyalty" after he arrived 17 minutes late for duty and she tried to justify his delay with manipulated ferry tickets.
Both are stationed in Melilla and personnel arriving by boat from Malaga are allowed to join the unit later. When she did not appear at 7.55 a.m., she was telephoned and said that she had just arrived by boat. He finally appeared at 8.15 am.
As evidence, his wife produced tickets for the Melilla-Malaga ferry (return trip), but it was found that the date had been manipulated and that they corresponded to another weekend, and both were sentenced for the crime of disloyalty, as set out in the Military Criminal Code, to six months in prison and suspended for that time. Lack of truthfulness in explaining a delay can constitute a disciplinary sanction.
The couple appealed, seeing the punishment as disproportionate, and the Military Chamber of the Supreme Court agreed with them in view of "the irrelevance and limited nature of the conduct prosecuted". "We are faced with a case of a mere delay of a few minutes in the appellant's arrival at his unit, caused by the fortuitous fact that he had fallen asleep," the Supreme Court points out, which does not rule out that he did not wake up because of the stress he had been suffering since his wife reported a superior for harassment at work. Read more.
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