The Madrid Prosecutor’s Office requests eight years in jail for the previous director of the Department of Human Anatomy and Embryology II of the Faculty of Medicine of the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) José Ramón Mérida Velasco.
Three years are for a criminal offense towards the well being of employees and the others for every of the 5 crimes towards ethical integrity. The non-public prosecution, on behalf of these affected, raises their request to 21 years in jail and 264,000 euros in compensation.
As civil legal responsibility, the prosecutor claims 66,619 euros (technician 1), 46,401 euros (technical 2), 77,103 euros (technical 3), 22,303 euros (technical 4) and 21,832 euros (technical 5) and 10,000 euros for (1, 2, 4 and 5) for the damages brought on and three,000 for (3).
According to the account of the Public Ministry, the physician compelled the employees for years to supply their providers “in unhealthy, degrading, dangerous and harmful situations.” A Labor and Social Security Inspection uncovered the state of affairs.
It was in May 2014, when he ordered the stoppage of all work, when the duties had been cleared up by the rectory of the UCM, 534 corpses had been extracted from the basement.
Before, the defendant reproached his workers for his or her refusal to collaborate with him within the duties of destroying our bodies and poisonous results. The trial is held on Friday.
“Permanent violation of their dignity”
The indictment denounces the best way during which Mérida subjected the employees “to unnecessarily degrading painful situations that transcended the labor sphere.” For years he “systematically” uncared for the “honest” calls for of the technicians.
“At the identical time that he blamed and reproached them for the overflow state of affairs that he brought on, with out offering any answer.” One of his complaints was forcing them to supply their providers in a basement with out air flow, which lacked probably the most primary hygiene situations.
“To the purpose that the presence of bugs, worms and larvae was frequent, surrounded by human stays piled up anarchically and submerged within the everlasting stench of putrefaction.”
With the place he held, he was the primary individual answerable for the route, management and surveillance of the labor situations of the laboratory personnel. The Prosecutor’s Office denounces that numerous causes plunged the workers “right into a state of hopelessness that brought on alterations within the notion of the fact that surrounded them.”
He cites “the concern of job loss, the worsening of their bodily and psychological situation, the impossibility of sustaining order at work because of the overflow of the work setting, the shortage of respect and appreciation of the duties they carried out in degrading situations.”
“They accepted as inevitable and regular a state of affairs that, objectively, constituted a everlasting violation of their dignity as human beings,” he explains.
“Between 40 and 50 our bodies” piled up in rot
The consultant of the Public Ministry maintains that the traits of the office and the circumstances during which the defendant directed the work exercise of the technicians “decided the creation of a severe threat to the well being, bodily and psychological integrity of the employees.”
Such circumstances had been recognized to Mérida “in addition to the dangers derived from them resulting from his standing as a health care provider.” For instance, the technicians labored in a basement, uncovered to the inhalation of gases.
There was “no particular enclosure that will stop the vapors from being concentrated and never spreading by way of the rooms and corridors or from utilizing numerous probably carcinogenic chemical merchandise each day.”
Regarding the chilly room the place a lot of corpses had been stored, when it broke down, the defendant ordered the technicians to extract between 40 and 50 our bodies from it. They stayed in a room to be cremated.
“However, because it was not attainable to proceed with the cremation of the our bodies resulting from their excessive quantity, they remained there within the course of of degradation or rotting,” provides the Prosecutor’s Office. When he was uncovered to the necessity to take them to a different place, the reply was that “it was very costly.”
“Don’t speak about something”
To clear up the issue, Mérida ordered the set up of one other motor “nevertheless it was additionally inadequate and shaped layers of ice on the corpses that needed to be eliminated 4 or 5 days earlier than use and, after that, they had been reintroduced into the chamber.”
There was no instruction and working ebook for the crematorium. To the primary grievance motivated by the malfunction of the refrigerating chamber resulting from extra of corpses and the unhealthy odor that it gave off, the reply was: “The doorways are closed and that nothing is claimed.”
Days earlier than the labor inspection, the defendant instructed the technicians to tie up the males, that he was very indignant with all of them, that issues had been going to remain the identical and that anybody who was not glad ought to go away.
According to the prosecutor, the amenities didn’t adjust to the laws for workplaces, since “the employees didn’t have showers, sufficient bathrooms, altering rooms or particular person lockers.”
Nor was the instructing use of the corpses probably the most acceptable, as a result of the our bodies entered the basement with out motion protocol, with out identification and irrespective of their origin or affected by infectious-contagious ailments.
“This lack of sanitary management of entry to our bodies decided that the employees can be uncovered to organic, infectious and/or parasitic dangers, which had been aggravated by the shortage of sufficient management over the well being of the technicians.”
But it’s that, as well as, the employees wore inappropriate clothes to hold out their duties. The indictment additionally reveals that the technicians carried out their duties within the “everlasting” presence of a powerful stench of putrefaction.
In addition, they dealt with manually and “in a repetitive method” hundreds whose weight ranged between 70 and 120 kilos or that they had been ordered to “introduce the our bodies into vats one and a half meters deep and extract them from the underside for his or her use or destruction.”