TWO British thugs – one a marine commando – who beat a taxi driver unconscious in Mallorca last summer have had the book thrown at them by the Spanish justice system.
The pair, 21 and 22 respectively at the time of the brutal assault, are facing two years in prison and a compensation payment to the victim of €11,624.
Shocking footage of the attack in Magaluf went viral, showing the suspects repeatedly beating and kicking Gabriel Fabián Callero, 57, as he lay on the floor.
The incident occurred at around 2:00am on August 23 on the busy Magaluf Avenue, just metres away from Punta Ballena.
According to the prosecuting indictment, the defendants suddenly jumped on the bonnet of the moving taxi, prompting Callero to get out of his taxi to remonstrate with them.
“I stopped immediately and got out to find that no damage was done to it,” Callero told the Olive Press in an exclusive interview after the assault.
“But then two of these British guys started to laugh at me, so I asked them what was so funny?”
It was then that one of them, a marine and ‘a very strong guy’, punched him in the face which practically knocked him unconscious.
The dad-of-four fell to the floor from the blow, injuring his shoulder, hip and face.
Three louts then set about beating him mercilessly until another taxi driver intervened with pepper spray to protect his colleague, whose skull was broken.
He later needed stitches across his forehead and the side of his head and was unable to work for two months.
The Brits fled the scene in high spirits until the Guardia Civil tracked them down and arrested them hours later.
That same night, taxi drivers in Calvia stopped service for hours in protest at the attack on one of their own by drunken tourists.
Once hauled before a judge, the thugs tried to claim that Callero had attacked them first and the brutal beating was just self-defence.
They were released on a €7,000 bail and permitted to return to the UK.
“What these idiots did was a disgrace and they need to be properly punished for it,” Callero, who is married to a British woman, told this newspaper.
The hooligans, who have not been identified, will be expected back in Spain in the coming weeks to attend their trial in Palma de Mallorca.
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