A man facing a possible jail term after boasting of his plans to assassinate Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez in phone text messages has told a court that he was inebriated when he wrote them and had no intention of committing murder.
Manuel Murillo, a 66-year-old security guard from Catalonia, went on trial on Tuesday and could face up to 18½ years in prison for planning to murder Mr Sánchez and illegal possession of weapons.
Much of the evidence against him is based on messages he allegedly sent via the WhatsApp mobile messaging app.
"We need to hunt Sánchez like a deer and put his head on the mantlepiece," read one message attributed to him. "So many hunters in Spain and none of them with balls."
However, in court on the opening day of his two-day trial, Mr Murillo said that he had been drunk and taken tranquillisers when he wrote the incriminating messages and that he was “a sentimental person” who would never commit murder.
“I felt like a hero, like Rambo, and I said things like that about saving Spain,” he said.
Franco exhumation
He started writing violent messages aimed at Mr Sánchez after the newly sworn-in Socialist prime minister unveiled plans in 2018 to exhume the remains of the dictator Francisco Franco from his mausoleum and move them to a smaller cemetery.
“We cannot allow them to humiliate the Generalissimo [Franco],” Mr Murillo wrote, adding: “If necessary I will arm myself and go and sit on Franco’s tomb and if anyone comes near I will shoot.”
Franco’s body was eventually exhumed in 2019 without any major incidents.
In some instances, Mr Murillo’s messages became more detailed. Comparing his plans to the Valkyrie plot of 1944 in which German officers attempted to kill Hitler, he said: “I will do it. I need help and you must be patriots. I’m a sniper and with a good shot Sánchez is finished before Spain goes under. We won’t need any wars.”
He suggested that a political rally in Catalonia at which Mr Sánchez was present would be a good opportunity to carry out the assassination.
Mr Murillo was arrested in September 2018 after a local far-right politician with whom he had shared his plans reported him to the police. Large stashes of weapons were seized in Mr Murillo’s home and his car.
According to the state prosecution, Mr Murillo had “the personal conviction of the need to plan actions which would cause the death of the prime minister as a form of defeating the Socialist government and he requested help both publicly and privately to carry this through”.
Mr Murillo told the court that shooting was his only hobby and that he spent much of his time looking after his mother and sister.
