Parties, music, alcohol until the wee hours of the morning and noises of sexual acts in military facilities next to the center for minors in sa Coma; drunken soldiers urinating outside the buildings; one in his underpants playing on the ping pong table of the center for minors where the children under the care of the Consell could not sleep because of the scandal; women entering and leaving the base of the Detachment of the Military Emergency Unit (UME) on Ibiza.
The revelry of the two soldiers and the corporal who were part of the UME detachment on Ibiza between August 19 and September 11, 2020 has cost them dearly. The unexemplary behavior of those who are tasked with responding within one hour at the most in the face of serious forest fires is considered serious misconduct by the Central Military Court, which has rejected the appeals of the three soldiers and has confirmed a sentence of 20 days of arrest in a military penitentiary establishment for each of the soldiers and 25 days for the head of the detachment.
It was Consell personnel who reported the inappropriate conduct of the soldiers to their superiors (the lieutenant colonel in charge of BIEM III, and the commander in charge of the Operations Center of BIEM III), who launched the investigation that would lead to the opening of a disciplinary file. The soldiers were assigned to the Third Emergency Intervention Battalion (BIEM III), located at the Jaime I Military Base in Bétera (Valencia), and were part of the 5th rotation of the semi-fixed detachment in sa Coma.
The center for minors and the EMU base are about 25 meters apart, in the sa Coma enclosure, owned by the Consell de Ibiza, and whose access is controlled. No one is allowed to come and go as they please. The UME soldiers are housed in a building owned by the Consell under an agreement signed with the Ministry of Defense, and must be permanently available, as their maximum time of deployment is one hour: when the UME is activated, its objective is to facilitate the intervention in forest fires in the Balearic Islands, as well as the transport of vehicles assigned to the affected island, if necessary.
Parties, civilians and alcohol at the Military Emergency Unit
The sentence states that “meetings were organized with civilians, in which alcohol was consumed without authorization, so that as a result of this alcohol intake they were not in a position to drive the service vehicles”. Therefore, in case of an emergency (a forest fire), the military whose task was to react quickly to intervene as soon as possible, would not have been able to do so because they were out drinking and partying.
The UME facilities in sa Coma were accessed, without authorization, by civilians outside the unit
The three sentences of the Court review the proven facts, which are conclusive. The head of the Consell for sa Coma communicated to the head of the UME battalion complaints about the behavior of the Detachment between August 19 and September 11, 2020, and she herself saw women leaving the UME facilities in sa Coma (even though they did not have authorization) and she also saw them enter later with shopping bags. The camera recordings allowed her to verify that different women were entering and leaving, and also captured the image of “different personnel urinating at the door of the building and with signs of what appeared to her to be drunkenness”.
A soldier plays ping pong in his underpants at the Center for Minors
The EMU facilities were accessed, without authorization, by civilians from outside the unit (men and women) who stayed until late at night, “and particularly in the early hours of September 4 to 5, 2020,” the sentence states. In that early morning, the noises and loud music provoked complaints from the staff of the Center for Minors, which is close to the EMU base. Even a minor “brought these facts to the attention of security when he could not sleep because of the noises, even saying that there were noises of sexual intercourse“.
For the full article, please visit Diario de Ibiza website here.