The general of the 'Mediator case' alleges that he is a "social corpse" incapable of altering evidence to request his freedom

General Francisco Espinosa, in prison for the 'Mediator case', in a 2020 image in Logroño, when he was active and coordinated the GAR-SI SAHEL project. ABEL ALONSO (EFE)

The retired general of the Civil Guard Francisco Espinosa Navas, alleged ringleader together with former PSOE deputy Juan Bernardo Fuentes Curbelo,

, of the plot dismantled in the

, has once again asked Judge María de los Ángeles Lorenzo-Cáceres, who is investigating the case, to release him.

In a letter to which EL PAÍS has had access, the high command of the armed institute ―which is the only one of the defendants for whom entry into preventive detention was decreed― once again influences the arguments that he already presented in his previous request for freedom, among them that his supposed ability to alter evidence, an argument that led to his entry into jail, is not such.

“Not only has he been retired for more than two years, but after being publicly exposed and scorned in a large amount of media, how much influence can he have on anyone or anything?” ,

The request for release comes after the judge decided last Saturday to change the date of the statement scheduled for next Friday by two witnesses, Javier Monzón and Adelaida PS, both linked to the general.

The first, a former rally champion and current manager of a company, was one of the participants in the chat dubbed "Team A" (referring to an old television series) on the WhatsApp messaging application in which, along with Espinosa, Miguel Ángel Ramírez (president of the UD Las Palmas and relative of the second witness), Eustasio López (also a businessman) and a high command of the Civil Guard in the Canary Islands also participated.

Adelaide P.

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In his brief, Espinosa's lawyer considers that the delay in these two statements harms his client because it also means a delay in the investigation of the case while he is still in pretrial detention, a situation that he considers "is taking longer than desired and of what is procedurally appropriate”.

In this sense, the defender recalls that the investigation lasts more than a year and that the indications that exist in the summary "do not imply a possible commission of especially serious crimes, neither in terms of their importance nor in terms of their amount."

In addition, he emphasizes the "fully" collaborative attitude of his client both with the agents of the Internal Affairs Service, to whom he pointed out the place where he kept more than 60,000 euros in wads of bills at his home and provided the keys to his mobile phones and computer equipment,

For all these reasons, the lawyer wonders why his client is the only one of the accused for whom admission to jail was ordered.

"Is it fair that Mr. Espinosa continues in prison, while other subjects involved take advantage and use this procedure to achieve 'notoriety'?", the letter asks in clear reference to Antonio Navarro Tacoronte, the alleged mediator of the plot. whose audio and image files uncovered the whole scandal.

Navarro Tacoronte came to travel to Madrid and be seen around Congress during the sessions of Vox's motion of no confidence against the Government last week.

For all these reasons, he requests the release of the high command of the Civil Guard.

This is the second time that the general has requested his release.

On February 26, his defense already presented a letter in the same sense, although in that, much more extensive, he harshly charged the mediator in the case, whom he accused of creating a "parallel fiction", a "bizarre framework", " a fabled reality” in which both he and the accused businessmen allegedly fell.

Espinosa, who already presented himself in that letter as "a social corpse" due to the media coverage of his case, tried to refute the evidence collected by the investigation against him in the case, not always with success.

In fact, he was not able to justify the origin of all the money found hidden in his home, in addition to acknowledging that he had an account in Belgium of which the Tax Agency was not aware, although he denied irregularities in any of these events.

The magistrate rejected her request days later and kept him in prison.

Espinosa remains confined in a cell of the module for the Security Forces of the Estremera prison.