Court acquits woman jailed for Twitter jokes

Spain’ s Supreme Court said Thursday it has exonerated a woman whose jail sentence for tweeting jokes about the 1973 assassination of a senior figure in the Franco dictatorship had raised concerns over free speech.
The high court cancelled the one- year jail term handed down in March 2017 by Spain’ s top criminal court to Cassandra Vera , 22, after finding her guilty of humiliating victims of terrorism.
It considered that the jokes she posted about “ an attack that happened 44 years ago , without any offensive comment towards the victim, is socially and even morally reproachable in that it makes fun of a serious human tragedy, but a criminal sanction is not reasonable . ”
Vera published 12 tweets between 2013 and 2015 about the assassination of Luis Carrero Blanco, the prime minister and heir apparent of dictator Francisco Franco who was killed in a car bomb attack in Madrid in December 1973 carried out by Basque separatist group ETA .
The massive explosion sent the car Carrero Blanco was travelling in hurtling into the air and over the roof of a church where he had just been attending mass.
“ ETA combined a policy against the use of official vehicles with a space programme , ” read one of Vera ’ s posts . Another said : “ Did Carrero Blanco also go back to the future with his car?”
Vera ’ s case raised questions over freedom of expression in Spain.
Even the granddaughter of Carrero Blanco attacked the move by public prosecutors to charge and put her on trial , saying in a letter sent to daily El Pais in January 2017 that while the jokes were in poor taste they were not worthy of such legal action.
“ I ’ m scared of a society in which freedom of expression , however regrettable it may be, can lead to jail sentences, ” Lucia Carrero Blanco wrote.
Vera ’ s case is not the only one that has caused concern .
A rapper known as Valtonyc has for his part been sentenced to three - and-a- half years in prison for a series of lyrics that the courts ruled glorified terrorism and insulted the Spanish crown .
Vera said she was relieved by the Supreme Court decision .
“ Really happy at a personal level for the end of a judicial ordeal which no one should have to experience, ” she tweeted .
“ But very concerned over other sentences like that of Valtonyc and other rappers and Twitter users. ”