The retired commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, in preventive prison since November 2017 and investigated for multiple crimes, sat on the bench for the first time this Friday for alleged slander to the former director of the National Intelligence Center (CNI) Félix Sanz Roldán, whom accused in 2017 in the program
Saved
having threatened to kill Corinna Larsen.
The ex-lover of Juan Carlos I has testified as a witness by videoconference from London at the request of Villarejo's defense and has insisted that she felt threatened by the former head of the Spanish spies.
The jailed commissioner has assured during the trial that he met "many times with Corinna" and that he recorded her with material supplied by the CNI: "I tried to seduce her, deceive her, gain her trust, because that was my job."
For his part, Sanz Roldán has denied having threatened the ex-lover of the king emeritus and meeting Villarejo: "It is the first time I have seen him in my life," he declared in Criminal Court number 8 in Madrid.
The Prosecutor's Office, which requested two years in prison for the retired commissioner for slander and false accusation, has withdrawn the accusation for slander at the end of the hearing.
The State Bar has maintained it.
The defense has shown its surprise at these different conclusions and has requested acquittal.
Villarejo's lawyer, José García Cabrera, asked at the beginning of the trial that his client, also a lawyer, question the witnesses directly, but the judge rejected him.
Nor did he admit his complaint that he had "only 15 minutes" to prepare because this trial had been suspended four times previously.
The retired commissioner, who has presented himself as a brave collaborator of the CNI and the security forces - "I have been in Iraq, in holes in Somalia ...", he mentioned - assured that his intention, when he met with Larsen, was protect the head of state and institutional interests.
"She always thought I was a lawyer who was going to help her," he said.
"I do not regret at all what I have done, even though I have been in prison for almost four years," he stressed, after assuring that the reason that at this time he is "the most vilified person in the country" is that he was the only one who dared to tell Félix Sanz Roldán what others don't.
Villarejo has also complained during his speech that he is being held incommunicado in prison and that they spy on him even
vis a vis
with his wife, and assured that, "about to turn 70 years old" he has "memory problems", although He later stated that thanks to the "neuroplasticity" in his mind he was "beginning to remember everything."
Larsen, who intervened in second place, related in English that before meeting in London with Sanz Roldán in 2012, after the fall of the monarch in Botswana who uncovered their relationship, "Spanish agents" entered his home and office in Monaco.
“I called King Juan Carlos to ask for an explanation.
He was not overly clear and told me that Sanz Roldán was running an operation to make sure I was protected from the
paparazzi
.
I had not given my consent and I think it was not necessary, because I was not going to be present in Monaco ”, he said.
"Did you have the feeling that you were a citizen threatened by the head of state and the secret services?" Villarejo's lawyer asked her.
"Yes.
She was very scared.
As a citizen, as a woman who is faced with such powerful people.
That terrified me, ”he said.
A book about the conspiracy to kill Lady Di
The ex-lover of the king emeritus, when asked by the defense of Villarejo, explained her meeting with the former head of the CNI.
“It was carried out at the express request of King Juan Carlos.
The King called me to inform me that Sanz Roldán was coming to London to meet with me.
He did not give me the option of rejecting that meeting ”.
During the trial, Larsen assured that he was uncomfortable that the meeting was to take place in the hotel room where he was in London and that the fact that the head of the Spanish intelligence traveled to the United Kingdom to see it and it seemed "pretty creepy."
According to his account, in that meeting, the chief of the Spanish spies told him that he could not guarantee his safety and that of his children.
"That terrified me," he stressed.
Returning to the family home in Switzerland that day, Larsen has said that a book was found on the conspiracy to kill Lady Di and that he received an anonymous call in Spanish telling him that there were "many tunnels between Monaco and Ibiza ”.
The ex-lover of Juan Carlos I assured that they had also entered his house in London.
To questions from the prosecution, Larsen confirmed that he had not filed a complaint for these events.
Sanz Roldán, for his part, has denied those accusations that Villarejo broadcast on television.
“I have never threatened a woman or a child.
Never ”, he stressed.
The former head of the CNI has not given any details about the meeting with Larsen, citing the law that regulates the CNI.
When asked about emails sent under a pseudonym that Larsen attributes to him, Sanz scoffed: “Paul Bon?
It's a bit of a joke.
Oh my God.
I do not acknowledge the authorship of those emails at all ”.
The former head of the Spanish intelligence services has also assured that he did not know Villarejo and that when he sensed that he might have relations with the CNI he took "measures", which he has not specified either.
The other axis of this trial against Villarejo deals with the complaint filed on June 1, 2017 by the retired commissioner himself against Sanz Roldán and a journalist from this newspaper for an article about his "tentacles" in the judicial world that was illustrated with a a photograph of him, according to the complaint, obtained in an antiterrorist operation in which he had participated as an undercover agent.
The complaint was not admitted for processing and the judge ordered the filing of the proceedings.
Villarejo appealed in reform and in appeal, without any success, and finally the Public Prosecutor's Office and the State Attorney's Office ended up taking actions against him for a false complaint in the courts of Madrid.
The former director of the CNI has assured this Friday during the trial that he did not know her until its publication.
“I did not see the photo, but from seeing it, no one in this world could deduce that it is from an anti-terrorist operation.
It is metaphysically impossible that with that photo an antiterrorist operation has been spoiled ”, he has settled.