14-year-old Tunisian boy dies at hands of Spanish authorities in detention center

By Alyssa McMurtry

OVIEDO, Spain (AA) - A 14-year-old boy from Tunisia is suspected to have been killed by Spanish authorities in a juvenile detention center on Thursday.

Isabel Blanco Llamas, a regional councilor in the government of Castile and Leon, told the press on Friday that the boy died after a confrontation with the center’s security officers.

She said the boy was acting violently toward personnel and physical property in the detention center, and two security officers tried to physically contain him.

After the intervention, those involved realized that the boy was unresponsive. They called paramedics, who tried to revive him, but he was declared dead shortly after.

Blanco Llamas said that both the security guards and others who saw the incident said the intervention was done “correctly.”

While coroners were performing an autopsy on the boy’s body, Blanco Llamas said the government will also open an investigation.

She pointed out that the boy had been violent in the past, which is why he was transferred to the juvenile detention center. Since January, she said authorities have had to take “containment measures” against the 14-year-old five times.

“They killed him and now they’re trying to blame him for his own death. This is unbearable,” tweeted the Spain-based journalist Youssef Ouled.

The teenager had come to Spain from Switzerland, where he recently had a surgical operation on his abdomen.

The boy’s mother, who remains in Tunisia, has been informed of his death and will be able to decide what to do with his body.