The Hate Crimes Prosecutor in Barcelona has pronounced two years of imprisonment for an Espanyol fan accused of uttering racist insults to humiliate and belittle Athletic Bilbao striker Iñaki Williams two years ago.
The sad and unwarranted incident happened in a La Liga match at the Cornellá-El Prat stadium involving Espanyol and Bilbao in January of 2020.
The prosecutor attributes to the accused his actions were criminal against fundamental rights and public liberties, in his modality of injuring the dignity of people for racist reasons and against moral integrity.
The fan has also been fined an amount of 5,475 Euros and has also been banned from attending football matches for five years after serving the prison term.
La Liga denounced at the time before the Prosecutor's Office the alleged racist insults against Williams and exercised private prosecution.
When Iñaki Williams was substituted in that game against Espanyol, he received boos and "manifestations of contempt", such as simulating the gestures of primates and repeated cries "uh, uh, uh, uh", onomatopoeia that imitates the sound made by monkeys.
The boos came from a part of the blue and white stadium located in sector 108 of the stands, where the accused was.
In his brief, the Prosecutor for Hate Crimes in Barcelona, ​​Miguel Ãngel Aguilar, maintains that these sounds imitating monkeys, as is "public and notorious", have been made on several occasions by groups of fans from different countries "to offend black soccer players publicly during the course of a soccer match," as quoted by El Pais.