BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Spain’s Constitutional Court ruled Wednesday that a strict stay-at-home lockdown order the Spanish government issued under a state of emergency during the first wave of COVID-19 last year was unconstitutional.

While upholding most terms of the state of emergency, the court said provisions ordering the population off the streets except for shorts shopping trips, unavoidable work commutes and other essential business violated Spain’s Constitution. 
 The court issued a brief statement that described the ruling as a split decision. State broadcaster TVE said six magistrates were in favor and five against. The full decision is expected to be released in the coming days. 
 According to TVE, the court majority ruled that the limitations on movement violated citizens’ basic rights and the state of emergency was a constitutionally insufficient mechanism to do that. The six magistrates said a state of exception, which does allow the government to suspend basic rights, would have been necessary. 
 Justice Minister Pilar Llop said that her government ”will uphold but does not share the decision” on the inadequacy of the emergency declaration ”that saved hundreds of thousands of lives.” 
 ”The home confinement rule declared under the state of emergency, along with the exemplary behavior of citizens, allowed us to stop the virus,” Llop said, adding that it was similar to orders given by other European governments. 
 The Constitutional Court made its ruling in response to a lawsuit brought by Spain’s conservative nationalist Vox party. Vox leader Santiago Abascal called Wednesday for Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to step down. 
 ”We cannot celebrate the decision because we have proof that the government was willing to break the law and tarnish the constitution,” Abascal said. 
 Spain’s government declared the state of emergency on March 14, 2020, three days after the World Health Organization said the spread of the coronavirus had become a pandemic. With Spain’s hospitals filling up, Sánchez’s left-wing coalition government won parliamentary backing, including from Vox lawmakers, for the state of emergency. 
 During the first six-week confinement period, Spaniards could not go out even for exercise, and Vox withdrew its support for the lockdown. 
 The lockdown helped reduce the number of new daily cases. The Spanish government gradually relaxed its pandemic restrictions once the worst of the emergency had passed. Since then, Spain has used a myriad of measures to control infections. The country has reported a pandemic death toll to date of 81,000. 
 Legal experts said until the court’s full decision is released, it won’t be clear if the ruling will open the gates to lawsuits against the government. 
 Fernando Simón, a constitutional law professor at the University of Navarra, said the Constitutional Court could limit the state’s legal exposure from the thousands of citizens were received fines for violating restrictions on movement during the state of emergency. 
 ”This ability is reasonable because if the impact of the decision is taken to the extreme, it could create chaotic situations,” Simón told The Associated Press in an email. 
 He said the wording of the Spanish Constitution regarding a state of emergency supported either a strict or a more open reading, adding that ”this type of juridical conflict would not even exist if the main political powers sought the common good.”

Police officers block the access to the Sol square during a protest against the curfew in Madrid, Spain, Saturday, Oct. 31, 2020. Nearly all Spaniards are facing a weekend with restrictions on leaving the regions where they live as authorities try to contain a sharp resurgence of reported coronavirus cases but refrain from a full lockdown to try to prevent further economic deterioration. Photo: Manu Fernandez/AP

During six weeks during early stages of pandemic, Spaniards weren’t allowed to go out

Spain’s top court rules pandemic lockdown unconstitutional

“Peter fought to the end, but was unable to win the battle,” the family said in a statement sent to Dutch media.

In this Thursday Jan. 31, 2008 file photo, Dutch crime reporter Peter R. de Vries reacts prior to attending a live TV show in Amsterdam, Netherlands. De Vries, one of the Netherlands best known crime reporters was shot Tuesday evening July 6, 2021, and taken to a hospital with serious injuries, police said. Photo: Peter Dejong/AP

Dutch crime reporter de Vries dies after Amsterdam shooting

Tamin Sultani was shot by police and arrested after an 18-minute rampage on March 3. Investigators who dismissed terrorism as a motive charged him with seven cases of attempted murder. 
 The Eksjo District Court said Sultani will be deported after serving his time. He has said he wanted to go back to Afghanistan. 
 The life sentence, which doesn’t have a fixed time, is the most severe punishment in Sweden. 
 Sultani attacked seven men with a 22-centimeter (8.7-inch) blade in the small town of Vetlanda, about 190 kilometers (118 miles) southeast of Goteborg, Sweden’s second-largest city. 
 Three of the victims survived life-threatening injuries, two were seriously injured, two others were moderately injured and one individual was slightly hurt. Police initially said the attacker used an ax but it later turned out that Sultani was armed with a knife. 
 In its verdict, the district court said Sultani used a kitchen knife that he had picked up at his apartment ”because he was so upset” about something blasphemous done to his god ”and wanted to kill that person.” 
 ”Nothing has emerged that that Tamim Sultani in advance had any plan to injure or attempt to kill the seven plaintiffs in the case,” the court said, adding he didn’t know the people he attacked. 
 However, the district court found that there was ”a concrete danger” that those attacked would die and that Sultani ”in all cases had directed violence against people’s vital organs.” 
 The court said ”it appears that he had avoided some schoolgirls” he met, noting Sultani had told that he understood the teenage girls laughed at him but ”would be afraid of the knife, so he hid it” in his sleeve. 
 Sultani sought asylum in Sweden in 2016. During the trial, he said he hadn’t managed to get a job and only managed to work in various internships. When his temporary residence permit expired, he was no longer allowed to study or work. 
 Sultani claimed he twice attempted to commit suicide a week before the knife attacks, 
 ”It was as if the brain had stopped working. I felt very bad mentally,” he told the court. A court-ordered psychiatric evaluation concluded that the man wasn’t mentally disturbed at the time of the attack and was fit for a prison sentence. 
 During the trial in a high-security courtroom, he confessed to three of the attacks and said he doesn’t remember the other four attacks but believes the victims’ accounts. 
 In November 2020, he had applied for a renewal of his temporary staying permit and the immigration authorities haven’t yet taken a decision.

Tamim Sultani was sentenced to life in prison. Photo: Swedish Police Department

Three of the victims survived life-threatening injuries.

Afghan man gets life for March stabbing rampage in Sweden

Covid-19 deaths and cases are on the rise again globally in a dispiriting setback that is triggering another round of restrictions and dampening hopes for a return to normal life.

The World Health Organization reported Wednesday that deaths climbed last week after nine straight weeks of decline. It recorded more than 55,000 lives lost, a 3% increase from the week before.

Workers in protective gear lower a coffin of a covid-19 victim to a grave for burial at the Cipenjo Cemetery in Bogor, West Java, Indonesia, Wednesday, July 14, 2021. The world’s fourth most populous country has been hit hard by an explosion of covid-19 cases that have strained hospitals on the main island of Java. Photo: Achmad Ibrahim/AP/TT

Last week global covid-19 deaths increased for the first time in nine weeks.