NOTORIOUS mafia hitman who sparked a pan-European manhunt after slipping out of a Madrid prison has had a 22-year murder conviction spectacularly overturned.
Yousef Mohamed Lehrech, 20, known in the underworld as ‘El Pastilla‘, was fully acquitted by the High Court of Justice of Andalucia, Ceuta and Melilla (TSJA) on February 19.
Judges revoked his previous 22-and-a-half-year prison sentence for a brutal gangland assassination, ruling his right to the presumption of innocence had been violated.
The sensational ruling exposes a series of catastrophic procedural failures by police and prosecutors regarding how the alleged killer was identified.
Lehrech had originally been found guilty by a jury of gunning down a man, named only as JFA, in the Cadiz city of Algeciras on October 6, 2022.
The victim was shot in the back with a 9mm pistol in a surprise attack by a hooded assailant wearing dark clothing and black gloves to conceal his identity.
But the TSJA noted an empty evidence trail, highlighting that two protected witnesses only picked Lehrech out of a photographic lineup.
The main witness only made this identification six months after the crime took place.
Crucially, a formal judicial identity parade was never conducted during the investigation.
The appeal court also slammed the fact that during the original trial, witnesses testified via video link and did not even have visual contact with the defendant to confirm his identity.
Because of these structural deficits, the court fully acquitted him of the murder charge.
The ruling marks another dramatic chapter in the life of the criminal, who made headlines globally following a humiliating Christmas escape from the Alcala Meco prison in Madrid.
He managed to slip out of the jail hidden among a group of departing visitors on December 23 in 2023.
In a staggering security lapse, Guardia Civil officers on the perimeter even stopped him as he tried to escape by the vehicle exit, only to redirect him to the pedestrian gate.
The career criminal then managed to travel some 2,200 kilometres across Europe before finally being arrested at a train station in Leipzig, Germany.
Despite his recent acquittal, he remains behind bars as he is due to stand trial for a separate murder.
He is accused of shooting his own gang boss in the abdomen in the Cadiz municipality of Los Barrios.
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