It’s bad enough going to jail, but being there because of some bureaucratic mistake, even though it’s only six days, is no joke.
This is what happened to Mirela Stoian, a 38-year-old Romanian woman, resident of Almuñécar. Owing to a judicial mistake she did six days in the provincial prison in Albolote. In the meantime, her 15-year-old daughter was alone at home.
There had been a clerks error in a law court in Palma de Mallorca because a fellow Romanian woman, with the same name, should have gone to prison over a theft. What had happened was that Mirela had gone to the Guardia Civil post in Almuñécar to report that her scooter had been stolen.
The officer on desk duty put her name into the computer and up came a warrant for arrest for a Romanian women with that name who had gone missing whilst out on a weekend pass from prison in the Balearic Islands. Before she knew it, she was in handcuffs in a police holding cell, pending appearing before a magistrate in Almuñécar.
Her assigned defence lawyer listen to her desperate explanations that she was not an escaped prisoner; i.e., the woman they were looking for. In fact, she has never set foot in Palma de Mallorca in her life.
But it was all in vain. On the 17th of August she entered prison. In desperation she told the prison governor, Jaime Hernández, about her situation. He obviously had his doubts so he contacted the law courts in Palma and pointed out that the personal information (DNI) did no coincide with the woman in his prison.
In the meantime, the defence lawyer contacted the lawyer who had handled the case of the other Mirela, who even though she was on holiday, confirmed that the photo provided by the Granada did not correspond in the slightest with her client.
Finally, six days after Mirela entered prison on the 17th of August, the Palma law courts ordered that she should be released.
It is no surprise that the Almuñécar Mirela is now demanding compensation for the judicial botch job that had her for nearly a week in Albolote Provincial Penitentiary.
Editorial comment: had this happened to a Spaniard with a common name such as Maria Jóse Garcia López, they would have made sure that the DNI was correct, but this was a Romanian woman…
(News: Almunecar, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)