Prison for Spanish woman who set fire to her daughter's rapist

A Spanish woman is expected to be sent to jail again after being found guilty of killing a man who raped her daughter by setting fire to him.

The regional high court of Alicante has rejected a plea by Maria del Carmen Garcia’s lawyer to order a stay on her imprisonment.

Garcia was sentenced to five-and-a-half years in prison for throwing petrol on the man who was out of prison at the time. The Alicante High Court initially sentenced her to nine-and-a-half years in jail but this was reduced by the Supreme Court which ruled that she had suffered a mental breakdown when she saw the man who had sexually abused her daughter. García denied that revenge was the motive for murdering 69-year-old Antonio Cosme Velasco when she happened to see him in a bar in her home town of Benejuzar, when he was out on day release in June 2005.

Velasco was six years into his nine-year sentence for the rape, which took place in 1998 when García’s daughter was only 13 years old.

The government denied García’s request for a partial pardon of her jail term, but she is appealing this decision with the Supreme Court.