Brutal attack prompts Spanish PM to hold hate crime meeting

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is convening an urgent meeting of a committee that oversees efforts to fight hate crime after hooded attackers beat a 20-year-old man in Madrid and used a knife to carve a profanity on one of his buttocks

MADRID -- Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is convening an urgent meeting of a committee that oversees efforts to fight hate crime after hooded attackers beat a 20-year-old man in Madrid and used a knife to carve a slur on one of his buttocks. Sánchez wants to “take a personal lead” on the issue and will attend the meeting, government spokeswoman Isabel Rodríguez said Tuesday after a Cabinet meeting. She said that “an attack like this ... alarms us all as a society.” In the attack last Sunday afternoon, the man was assaulted as he entered the apartment building where he lived in a neighborhood of the Spanish capital.