An elderly Spanish doctor who became the first person to stand trial over the country’s infamous “stolen babies” scandal has been found guilty of all charges but acquitted because the statute of limitations had expired. 
 
 Eduardo Vela, who worked as a gynaecologist at the San Ramón clinic in Madrid, had been accused of taking Inés Madrigal from her biological mother in the spring of 1969 and giving her to the 46-year-old woman who was falsely certified as her birth mother and who would raise her. 
 
 Prosecutors had sought an 11-year prison sentence for Vela on charges of unlawful detention, falsifying official documents and certifying a nonexistent birth. 
 
 Judges at Madrid’s provincial court on Monday said that Vela’s landmark trial, which began at the end of June, had “indisputably proved” that he had committed the three offences and it was “crystal clear” the doctor, now 85, had faked official documents and handed the baby over to a couple who were not her parents. 
 
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 However, they ruled that too much time had passed for a conviction since Madrigal could not have been unlawfully detained once she became an adult and had only brought her complaint against Vela six years ago. 
 
 “As a consequence of all the above, and noting that the complainant reached her majority on 4 June 1987, and that the statute of limitations for the most serious crime – unlawful detention – is 10 years, and that the complaint was brought in April 2012, the crimes have expired under the statue of limitations,” they said in their judgment. 
 
 The trial was a test case for the thousands of families who are thought to have been caught up in the illegal practice, which began shortly after Franco’s victory in the civil war and continued until well after the dictator’s death in 1975. 
 
 According to some estimates, as many as 300,000 babies may have been taken from their birth mothers and placed with families who supported the Franco regime. Some of the stolen children are thought to have been placed with families in the US and Latin America. 
 
 Among those women targeted were single mothers, those with “degenerate” political views or those from poor backgrounds. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Dr Eduardo Vela. Photograph: web 
 
 Madrigal, whose mother told her she was adopted when she turned 18, described the court’s decision as “bittersweet” and said she would appeal against it. 
 
 “I feel good because the judges acknowledged the theft, but of course I don’t agree with the statute of limitations point,” she told the Guardian. 
 
 Her lawyer, Guillermo Peña, had argued that the statute of limitations should not apply to his client’s case as she had not discovered she had in fact been stolen – rather than just adopted – until 2010. 
 
 “I didn’t know about any of that in 1987,” said Madrigal. “But Vela’s lawyer brought up the statute of limitations again and again during the trial – right from the start. And yet the Madrid provincial court has always been opposed to the statute of limitations and had previously always found in our favour.” 
 
 Madrigal said the next step would be an appeal before the supreme court. 
 
 “We’re going to keep fighting.” 
 
 Madrigal said her mother, who died two years ago at the age of 93, had supported her efforts to find justice and answers. 
 
 “I always say she didn’t give birth to me but I was born in her heart,” she said before the trial. “She lived to look after me and see me happy.” 
 
 Madrigal, a railway worker and president of the Murcia branch of the SOS Stolen Babies association, had also acknowledged that the proceedings were unlikely to bring her real closure or help her find her birth mother. 
 
 Vela, who oversaw the clinic for 20 years, told the court that he could not remember details of how it was run. A policeman who investigated the case concluded that the hospital had been used as a source of trafficked babies, and said that Vela had told him that he had burned the archive files. 
 
 Madrigal said she hoped her legal action would be first of many brought by stolen babies and their families, arguing that people like her had been torn from their parents, trafficked and ignored for too long. 
 
 She said some of the stolen children had been placed with families in countries including the US, Mexico and Chile. 
 
 “We were Europe’s baby supermarket and babies were stolen for 60 years,” she said. ||||| Ines Madrigal speaks to journalists outside a court in Madrid, Spain, Monday Oct. 8, 2018. A Spanish court has ruled that a doctor stole a newborn child nearly five decades ago, one of many abducted during... (Associated Press) 
 
 Ines Madrigal speaks to journalists outside a court in Madrid, Spain, Monday Oct. 8, 2018. A Spanish court has ruled that a doctor stole a newborn child nearly five decades ago, one of many abducted during Spain's 20th-century dictatorship, but cleared him because the statute of limitations had expired.... (Associated Press) 
 
 MADRID (AP) — A Spanish court ruled Monday that a doctor stole a newborn child nearly five decades ago, one of the many abducted during Spain's 20th-century dictatorship, but cleared him because the statute of limitations had expired. 
 
 The Madrid court said 85-year-old gynecologist Eduardo Vela could not be punished because one of those who were stolen, plaintiff Ines Madrigal, did not make her complaint until 2012, more than a decade after the gravest crime had taken place. 
 
 The court did find, however, that Vela was responsible for abducting Madrigal in 1969, faking her birth by her adoptive parents and forging official documents. 
 
 Monday's verdict is Spain's first in relation to the wide-scale child trafficking that took place from the onset of the country's Civil War in 1936 to the death of dictator Gen. Francisco Franco in 1975. 
 
 The right-wing regime waged a campaign to take away the children of poor families, prisoners or political enemies, sometimes stripping women of their newborns by lying and saying they had died during labor. The children were then given to pro-Franco families or the church, who educated the children on the regime's ideology and on Roman Catholicism. 
 
 Vela, the director of a Madrid clinic considered to be at the epicenter of the scandal, denied the accusations during this year's trial. 
 
 Madrigal, who learned at 18 that she wasn't living with her biological parents, argued that she couldn't have lodged her complaint earlier because she only learned about the scheme in 2010, when her adopting mother, who died three years later, disclosed the details of what had happened at Vela's clinic. 
 
 DNA tests confirmed the account, but Madrigal's biological parents were never found. 
 
 Madrigal, now 49, said she considered the provincial court's verdict to be "bittersweet" and announced she would be appealing it to the country's Supreme Court. 
 
 "I'm happy because the judges are acknowledging that there was theft, that I was taken away from my mother, but I didn't think they would stop short of convicting him," she told reporters, adding that "the judges should had been brave." 
 
 Madrigal's was the only case of "stolen babies" — as they are known in Spain — that has made it to the trial stage. Most lawsuits have been rejected in the past by courts for coming after the statute of limitations expired. 
 
 Spain only started investigating the "stolen babies" cases a decade ago, when National Court magistrate Baltasar Garzon opened a probe on the more than 30,000 children that were under the care of the regime.
– Fascism's shadow hung over Spain Monday as a former doctor was found guilty of stealing newborns for infertile couples—but still went unpunished, the BBC reports. A Madrid court ruled that gynecologist Eduardo Vela, 85, had taken newborn Ines Madrigal from her biological mother in 1969 and gave her to another woman who was wrongly certified as Madrigal's birth-mother. But judges said the 10-year statute of limitations for "unlawful detention" had expired, since Madrigal became an adult in 1987 and only brought the complaint in 2012, per the Guardian. "I didn’t know about any of that in 1987," says Madrigal. "But Vela’s lawyer brought up the statute of limitations again and again during the trial—right from the start." And Madrigal isn't alone: Thousands of similar cases have been reported, since General Franco's fascist regime allowed doctors to take newborns from "left-wing" mothers and give them to pro-Franco families, per the AP. Priests and nuns made lists of parents seeking children while doctors allegedly lied to mothers about what became of their kids. Even post-Franco, Spaniards often kept quiet in a society that respected the Roman Catholic Church and embraced a so-called "pact of forgetting" during the 1970s transition to democracy. But with the European Parliament pressing Spain to take action, this drama appears far from over—except for Vela, who ducked a prison sentence that prosecutors wanted to last for 11 years.