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"Anti-drug operations crash against the age of our procedural system"

2022-05-20T08:21:47.304Z


The new chief prosecutor of Cádiz, Ángel Núñez, advocates a new criminal procedure law to speed up the bottlenecks in the fight against drug trafficking


Cadiz is not just any province or simple in the judicial field.

It has a Court divided into four seats —Cádiz, Jerez, Algeciras and Ceuta—, with territory on both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar and located in the southernmost point of Europe, at the mercy of hashish trafficking and immigration.

Perhaps that is why Ángel Núñez (Seville, 1965) assures that it did not even cross his mind to apply for the position of chief prosecutor of Cádiz, until his colleagues asked him.

The expert in crimes against the environment and historical heritage took office this past Wednesday after the retirement of Ángeles Ayuso with the aim of fighting pressing crimes in the area, while defending the pending reform of the Criminal Procedure Law to give more weight to the Prosecutor's Office in the fight against drug trafficking.

Question

.

Immigration, drug trafficking, illegal construction... Of all the problems that the area suffers in terms of crime, which one worries you the most?

Answer

.

In my speech [at the inauguration] I talked about drug trafficking, drug trafficking, organized crime and corruption, which in turn has a very varied dynamic of criminal forms, and sexist violence.

But I could also mention crimes committed by computer means, scams, because they are experiencing a notable increase.

We have many cases of young people who sometimes already have a previous track record before the juvenile jurisdiction and who continue once they reach the age of majority.

Q.

The lack of means is a recurring complaint in the reports of your predecessor or your colleagues, to what extent is it a problem?

R.

It is a serious problem.

We do not even have a ratio of one prosecutor for each jurisdictional body, when in addition we, apart from processing the procedures, have to carry out the trials and the subsequent phase, that of appeals and execution.

And in terms of officials, we don't even have a ratio of one official from the office for each prosecutor.

This makes our work very difficult.

Q.

Does this lack of means affect the fact that later there are cases, such as drug trafficking, in which undue delays become a benefit for the defendant?

R.

I believe that the delays that occur do not respond to the lack of personal means, because that lack of means is compensated with overexertion.

The delays are normally a consequence of the antiquity of our criminal procedure system that allows procedural strategies, which are legitimate because the law allows them, to give rise to these delays.

Q.

At what point do you think drug trafficking is in the province?

R.

Who really knows is the anti-drug prosecutor of Cádiz [Ana Villagómez], who is also the anti-drug prosecutor of Andalusia, but I think good results have been achieved.

Finally, there has been a real commitment from the administrations, in this case yes, regarding the provision of means.

The prosecutors are doing an extraordinary job, but we find the bottlenecks, which are the courts.

Many operations can be carried out, but in the end we arrived at the idea of ​​the single-person investigating judge that our law of 1882 provided for. Anti-drug operations collide with the antiquity of our procedural system.

Q.

And what role do you think the Cadiz mafias have in international drug trafficking?

I say this because investigations uncover increasingly powerful links with large international organizations.

A.

Drug trafficking is the type of crime in which we see a greater transnational dimension.

It is not only with regard to the substances themselves, which in most cases have a foreign origin, although we are witnessing a greater production, for example, of marijuana in our territory.

It is also due to the increasingly elaborate financial engineering that accompanies crimes against public health and that leads to money being inserted into diabolical circuits that make it difficult to locate beyond our borders.

In some cases, beyond our borders but very close…

Q.

Traffickers have carried out murders, settling scores, attacks on agents... Has it been possible to put a stop to this violence?

R.

We must be very vigilant in relation to all that collateral violence to the drug trafficking phenomenon that any lay person in Law can find out about by reading Don Winslow [American crime novel writer].

I believe that we are still in terms of control, fortunately.

But we must not give up at any time in the effort, because this situation can easily overflow.

P.

Since the special plan against drug traffickers in the Strait was approved, we have witnessed large operations with dozens of detainees that later become very complex macro-legal cases.

Are you in favor of this way of proceeding?

R.

A law of 1882 that was designed for a crime fundamentally against life and against property, that is, crimes of injury, homicide, murder, robbery, theft or fraud, is not prepared to house within it procedures of this magnitude.

No matter how many reforms it has undergone and which have turned it into a kind of

procedural Frankenstein

, it does not offer a response in terms of speed to this dimension of crime that was not contemplated in its origin.

The lawyers, as is logical, if I were a lawyer I would do the same, they take advantage of it.

Prosecutor Ángel Núñez, at one point in the interview."JUAN CARLOS TORO"

P.

Although the numbers of boat arrivals in the province have been reduced, we continue to witness arrests for human trafficking.

Where are these investigations?

Are the real organizers ever found or are people who are really also victims of these mafias sometimes investigated?

R.

I would distinguish two things.

In the first place, we do not always reach the top of the pyramid because those stages of the criminal organization are based outside of Spain.

It is not easy to carry out these investigations, but I would also say that we are not talking about sentencing victims, we are sentencing people who commit crimes, because if we apply this concept of victim to someone who carries out important activities for the trafficking mafias to function, we would have to apply it also to people who carry out secondary activities in relation to drug trafficking.

And no one doubts that whoever drives a boat with drugs or whoever stashes drugs on the beach is committing a crime.

P.

In the last reports of the Prosecutor's Office, your predecessor pointed to the abandonment of the mayors to collaborate in the problem of illegal urban planning, another serious problem in Cádiz.

What do you think can be done to reverse this attitude?

R.

I was a prosecutor for Town Planning and also for the Environment of Andalusia and I have suffered quite a bit from this problem.

At that time it was difficult to obtain a sentence in which the demolition of what was improperly built was agreed.

It was something like the thief is arrested, he is sentenced, but he is allowed to keep the loot.

Today the problem we face is the execution of the sentence that agrees to the demolition.

I understand that someone who has a position that depends on the vote is somewhat reluctant to carry out sentences that are always presented as apparently unfair situations, when in reality they are not.

The appearance of the urban inspection body was a step forward and now we are insisting from the Prosecutor's Office on the need for the mayors and other authorities to assume responsibility.

P.

Before leaving, the former Minister of Justice Juan Carlos Campo proposed a reform of the Law of Criminal Procedure that proposed giving more weight to prosecutors in the instruction of investigations.

What do you think of that approach?

R.

I am an absolute defender of the direction of the investigation for the Public Prosecutor's Office.

I was part of the commission that in 2011 drew up the first preliminary draft, with Juan Carlos Campo being Secretary of State, and all the legislative projects that have taken place since then point to the direction of the investigation by the Public Prosecutor because that is what favors true judicial impartiality.

The judge becomes a body outside the procedure that is not contaminated in any way and controls the investigative action.

It allows him to dedicate himself to what the Constitution says, which is to judge and have what is judged executed.

In addition, the fact that the investigation is directed by the prosecutor supposes more of a judge and not less of a judge, because he is going to be there to say no.

It also supposes a reinforcement of the right of defence,

P.

You are a lover of Carnival, the maximum exponent of a freedom of expression that some people see as more and more threatened.

Do you share that concern?

A.

Yes, I think that in a certain way, although in a well-intentioned way, some approaches lead us to a kind of neo-Victorian era in which certain things cannot be touched.

Certain things cannot be said.

In my opinion, humor, especially if it is done in a creative and artistic way like in Cádiz, should not have limits other than what the Constitution establishes.

The law is based on the idea that freedom of expression is made precisely so that we have to put up with things that are difficult for us to put up with.

If not, it would not be freedom of expression.

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Source: elparis

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