Saturday, December 25, 2010

Muslim ham complaint thrown out as 'abusive, sectarian, capricious and inadmissible'

José Reyes Fernández - the teacher involved -

The Children’s Prosecutor in Algeciras, Juan Cisneros, has definitively archived the complaint from a student of a secondary school in La Linea, who had denounced his geography teacher for talking about Serrano ham in class, as it offended his Muslim sensibilities.

The teacher had been explaining how the climate at Trevelez in the Granada Alpujarra is ideal for the curing of its famous local ham.

The prosecutor described the pupil’s attitude as ‘abusive, sectarian, capricious and inadmissible’ and ordered the definitive archiving of the complaint. He demanded all the documents in the case which had been placed with Instruction Court 1 in La Linea, and after studying them, threw it out.
Juan Cisneros said ‘There is not even the minimal indication of any type of penal infraction’. He noted that there were differences in the version of events from both sides, but ruled that ‘penal jurisdiction is somewhat more serious, and it cannot be used capriciously by anybody’.
However he added that if the teacher had made an inadequate response, any complaint about that would have to be placed before the education authorities.

The prosecutor noted the media circus which had been created around the case, mainly by the youngster’s parents, and described the resulting public relevance as ‘worrying’.

He admitted that it has ‘journalistic interest and so it is logical there is public debate’ but he did not think it justifiable that ‘certain personal data of the youngster’ had been released by some media, and he did not rule out the possibility that some crime had been committed in that regard.

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