The vice president of the Government and leader of Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, this Tuesday.POOL MONCLOA /
Throughout 63 pages of rationale, Judge Manuel García-Castellón charges with extreme harshness against Vice President Pablo Iglesias, whom he places behind a “false” campaign allegedly orchestrated by Podemos to present himself in a “tortuous” way in the
case Dina
as a victim of the state sewers.
The judge does not miss an opportunity to speak of the "simulated trick before the court", "false complaint" or "simulation of crime" in reference to him, and of "tortuous use of the criminal process" and "reckless disregard for the truth" in the case of some of his collaborators.
The judge points out in his letter that Pablo Iglesias, "who had seen Dina Bousselham's card, knew that the publication was the result of a leak, and that the published images had previously been sent by Mrs. Bousselham to third parties."
Convinced that Iglesias has tried to deceive him, the magistrate of the National High Court attributes up to four possible crimes in some intricate investigations that started as a separate piece of the
Villarejo case
, when the Internal Affairs Unit of the Police sent on March 19, 2019 a report to the judge detailing that she has found a copy of the "data extraction" of Bousselham's mobile phone at the home of retired police commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, whose theft she herself had reported in 2015 (when she was still a collaborator of Iglesias).
At first, García-Castellón, who appreciates exact coincidences between the allegedly stolen material and what was later published in various media (such as
Okdiario
), decided to find out if Villarejo committed a crime by leaking that information or, even, if he was behind an operation to steal the mobile.
A line of investigation that marked the axis of the investigations in the first months, when he called Iglesias to testify as a victim, a condition that he would later withdraw and that he would recover thanks to a ruling by the Criminal Chamber of the National Court.
The leader of Podemos attended, in fact, on March 27, when the general elections were only one month away.
"This is a criminal plot that involves corrupt police officers, the media and big business," he said after testifying.
Words that have now turned against him.
Because everything takes a turn in May of this year.
With the case stalled due to the impossibility of proving if Villarejo is behind the leak to other media or the theft and after accusing two
Interviú
journalists
who provided the commissioner with the copy of the card, Bousselham is again quoted, who enters contradiction when she recognized for the first time that, before her mobile phone was stolen, she herself had taken screenshots of the chats that were later released in the press, and that she even forwarded them.
The former adviser also says that when she received the card from Iglesias, it was damaged.
These details make the judge suspicious, who prints the first round of the case: he decides to focus on what is behind the damage that the card presented and on the version of Podemos.
The letter sent this Wednesday to the Supreme Court collects its conclusions and the crimes attributed to Iglesias, who is measured as a deputy and member of the Government.
Discovery and disclosure of secrets.
Punished with between one and four years in prison, the magistrate considers that Iglesias accessed Bousselham's personal data and files without consent when the president of the Zeta Group gave him the mobile card of his former assistant - which had come into his hands - and the leader of Podemos decided to keep it for months, until
Okdiario
began to publish a part.
According to the judge, there was a "seizure" of that "intimate and personal" content.
With the aggravating circumstance of "gender reasons", García-Castellón adds, recalling that the vice president said in an interview that he did not give the card to its owner before "so as not to subject Dina to more pressure."
The judge admits that in order to investigate this crime, a prior complaint from the affected person is required, and adds that it should be the Supreme Court who asks Bousselham if he wants to take action.
The instructor understands that the former collaborator of Iglesias "has evidenced in this procedure her willingness to proceed for this crime," although she has never addressed her former boss and has even defended him in some writing.
Computer damage.
Another key is the status of the mobile card that Bousselham received from Iglesias.
The magistrate believes that the vice president, during the time he kept it, damaged it "with the intention of rendering it useless."
"He proceeded to disable the device," he underlines, despite acknowledging that, "so far", he has not been able to obtain "direct evidence of the material destruction of the card by the gauge."
That is, a proof that it was Iglesias who damaged the device.
Even so, "there are sufficient elements of the charge to be able to attribute" the damages - a crime punishable by a penalty of six months to three years in prison.
The card under suspicion, which the collaborator finally handed over to the National Court, showed an external deterioration that the judge, after ordering an investigation, admits that it is due to the "sanding" made by a company in the United Kingdom with which Bousselham contacted to recover the content.
Despite this, he insists that there is a prior "failure".
Although "it has not been possible to determine what happened to him, why it does not work," acknowledges the judge, who details these extremes after he issued an international order for the British company to explain its version.
He also asked the police for a new report on the electronic device.
Two inquiries that were unsuccessful.
The UK company explained that, when it received the card, it was "physically intact."
And the Scientific Police agreed that the "sanding" that it presented when arriving at the Hearing may coincide with the recovery processes to which said company subjected it: "By not being able to read the content of the memory, it cannot be determined whether there are previous damages, ”added the agents in a report of August 12, 2020, known weeks before the Criminal Chamber of the National Court decided to return Iglesias to the status of victim in this case, thus contradicting García-Castellón , who had taken it off in July.
False report or simulation of crime.
The magistrate suggests that Iglesias could also incur in one of these two crimes or both.
The first carries up to two years in prison and the second a fine.
In García-Castellón's opinion, the vice president and Podemos drew up a whole strategy to present themselves as victims of the “state sewers”.
Which included, he adds, "the simulation and tortious use of the criminal process" when reporting in court to the
Okdiario
website
knowing "that there was no connection between the images published by the digital" and the disappearance of Bousselham's mobile.
"I did not intend to clarify a crime of theft, or a crime of discovery or disclosure of secrets, but to act against the digital newspaper."
Iglesias "knew that Dina was the origin" of the leak, maintains the judge, who resorts to the testimony given by José Manuel Calvente, a former lawyer for the party confronted with its leadership, who spoke of "assembly."
The magistrates of the Criminal Chamber stressed in their ruling, dated September 16, that "there is no evidence" to support the "alternatives" raised by the instructor.
Furthermore, the Chamber added, the "alternative hypotheses" raised would not be, in their case, the jurisdiction of the National High Court, as the events had allegedly been committed outside the investigated criminal organization and by outsiders.
In some way, that ruling in his favor is the one that has turned against Iglesias, because before such a resolution, the judge decided to stop his investigations and raise his suspicions to the Supreme Court, which now has in its hands the future of the current second vice president of the Government.