Charges against Spanish parents of China-born girl upped to murder

A Spanish judge on Friday upgraded charges relating to the death of the Chinese-born, 12-year-old adopted daughter of a couple from homicide to murder in a case that has gripped Spain.

Rosario Porto, a 44-year-old lawyer, and her ex-husband, 49-year-old journalist Alfonso Basterra, were charged last month with “homicide, possible murder” and imprisoned without bail while awaiting the results of toxicological tests on their daughter’s body.

But after questioning the two suspects again on Friday, the judge leading the investigation raised the charges against them to murder because of “the aggravating circumstances of treachery and kinship”, the High Court of Galicia said in a written statement.

Homicide is the legal term for killing without premeditation while murder charges apply in the case of a planned homicide.

The body of the girl, Asunta Yong Fang Basterra Porto, was discovered in the early hours of September 22 in woodlands near Santiago de Compostela in the northwestern region of Galicia, just hours after her parents had reported her missing.

Police on Friday searched for the second time a rural home in the area belonging to Rosario Porto’s recently deceased parents. Porto and her former husband, their lawyers, and the investigating judge were at the house during the search.