Ex-doctor found guilty in ‘stolen babies’ case

A SPANISH court found an 85year-old former doctor guilty yesterday of taking a newborn away from her mother under the Franco dictatorship but refrained from convicting him, in the first trial of the so-called “stolen babies” scandal.

The Madrid court ruled that the deed was committed too long ago for the defendant to be legally convicted. It found former gynecologist Eduardo Vela guilty of taking Ines Madrigal, now 49, away from her mother as a newborn in 1969.

During and after the 19391975 dictatorship, thousands of babies were taken away from their mothers, who were told they had died after birth.

The babies were adopted by infertile couples, preferably close to the far-right regime, often with the help of the Catholic Church.

Vela, who used to run a clinic, was the first to stand trial for alleged involvement in the baby trafficking. Prosecutors wanted him jailed for 11 years.

He was accused of taking Madrigal from her biological mother and giving her to another woman, who was falsely certified as her birth mother.

Madrigal hopes her case will help open “thousands of cases that are closed” — even if she will never know who her real mother was.

“In this country, a person who played God... cannot remain unpunished,” she said at the end of the hearings.

In an investigation in Madrid in December 2013, she used a hidden camera to record Vela as he appeared to confess to having given Madrigal away as a “gift” in June 1969. Vela’s lawyer, Rafael Casas, criticized the hidden camera recording, saying his client was innocent.