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Spanish court sentences woman to prison for offensive jokes on Twitter
A Spanish woman was sentenced to jail for one year after tweeting "offensive" jokes about the assassination of Luis Carrero Blanco, a former prime minister of Spain who was killed in a car bomb attack in 1973. (Lluis Gene/AFP/Getty Images)

Spanish court sentences woman to prison for offensive jokes on Twitter

A Spanish woman was sentenced to jail time on Wednesday for posting jokes on social media regarding the 1973 assassination of a senior member in the Francisco Franco dictatorship.

The woman, 21-year-old Cassandra Vera, was found guilty of glorifying terrorism and humiliating victims of terrorism, according to The Guardian. She was sentenced to a one-year jail term by Spain's high court, the National Audience.

Vera wrote 13 posts on Twitter between the years of 2013 and 2016, making light of the assassination of Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, who was killed in a car bomb attack in 1973 carried out by the ETA, a group supporting the national liberation movement. Blanco was the prime minister of Francisco Franco's dictatorship.

In the attack, Blanco's car was blown over the roof of a church where he had just attended mass. Vera reportedly tweeted out remarks such as "“ETA combined a policy against the use of official vehicles with a space programme," and "Did Carrero Blanco also go back to the future with his car?"

Although she was sentenced to the year-long jail term, Vera is not expected to actually serve the term because those in Spain convicted of a non-violent crime with a sentence less than two years are usually not imprisoned.

According to The Guardian, even the granddaugter of Blanco came out in defense of Vera's free speech.

"I’m scared of a society in which freedom of expression, however regrettable it may be, can lead to jail sentences," she wrote in a letter to the government of the region, El Pais.

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