The prosecutor of the
Tsunami Democràtic case
, Miguel Ángel Carballo, attacks the latest steps taken in the investigation by Judge Manuel García-Castellón, who on November 6 decided to promote the indictment for terrorism crimes, among others, of
former president
Carles Puigdemont;
of Marta Rovira, general secretary of ERC, and of Rubén Wagensberg, member of the Parliament's board, who announced this week his departure to Switzerland out of “fear” of this investigation by the National Court.
In a new letter dated Wednesday, to which EL PAÍS has had access, the representative of the public ministry criticizes the magistrate for committing “flagrant contradictions.”
Furthermore, Carballo considers “totally unjustified and unmotivated” the reasoned statement sent to the Supreme Court to take up the case;
and he speaks of a “significant lack of arguments” to specify which actions of a “terrorist nature” would be attributed to those identified.
This writing shows the enormous gap that has opened between the prosecutor and the judge in the case, who were together during the first phases of the investigation - which began in 2019 to investigate the protests incited by the Tsunami Democràtic platform against the Supreme Court ruling that condemned to the leaders of the
process.
However, their path was definitively separated after the order of November 6, which Carballo appealed to the Criminal Chamber of the Court.
The public ministry not only rejects that the events can be classified as terrorism (it only considers public disorders and therefore defends that the summary be sent to the courts of Catalonia);
But he also believes that the attribution of crimes to the former Catalan president cannot even be considered a “conjecture” and has pointed out that there is not “a single piece of information” that would allow the suspects to be accused of inducing or cooperating in violent acts.
More information
García-Castellón extends the investigation of the 'Tsunami case' for six months
In the letter, dated Wednesday, the prosecutor reproaches García-Castellón: “To date, the instructor has carried out procedures that have not concluded at all, nor have they provided any new information, regarding the indictment of the accused [Puigdemont and Wagensberg], being especially significant regarding the former president, to whom not even the Civil Guard made any attribution of the events under investigation.”
The public ministry considers it a “contradiction” that, after issuing the indictment order on November 6 where it refused to send a reasoned statement to the Supreme Court, it finally did so 15 days later, without waiting for the Court Chamber to resolve the appeal of the Supreme Court. Prosecutor's Office.
And without, in Carballo's opinion, new information having been incorporated into the case that implicated the two qualified politicians.
Thousands of people gathered in front of the Prat airport during the Democratic Tsunami protest, in 2019. Quique García (EFE)
According to the prosecutor, this change in criteria is “unjustified”, since the “progress of the investigation” at this time into the alleged participation of Puigdemont and Wagensberg has been “null”.
An argument that the public ministry already put on the magistrate's table when appealing the resolution by which it sent the case to the Supreme Court, and that García-Castellón rejected outright two weeks ago.
The judge, who links Puigdemont to the origin of the Tsunami, considers that since November new evidence has been incorporated into the summary (such as Mossos reports on the blockade of the El Prat airport and the judicial investigation into the death of a French tourist from a heart attack during that protest, as well as the appearance of police officers injured during the riots) that "consolidate" their "hypothesis": "Appreciating the existence of criminal acts that, from the initial classification, have the character of a crime of terrorism."
But, precisely, the Prosecutor's Office criticizes this point in its new writing this Wednesday.
According to Carballo, all this new information incorporated has nothing to do with, nor does it provide any new information about the alleged involvement of Puigdemont, Rovira and Wagensberg.
“The proceedings have focused on investigating, or rather proving, the consequences of the acts of public disorder carried out in Catalonia at the end of 2019 by various groups and by several people, but none of the agreed proceedings have had an impact, nor practiced, in the supposed responsibility of those certified.
Furthermore, it has extended the practice of proceedings to the accreditation of facts that are not even included in the intelligence reports of the Civil Guard, carrying out a broad scope of the object of the procedure that lacks justification," criticizes the public ministry.
Crossed reproaches
The exchange of reproaches between the prosecutor and the investigating judge has become common in the
Tsunami case
.
“It was completely incongruous to agree to a series of proceedings in the order of November 6 and, without waiting for their result, to precipitate the referral of the reasoned statement to the Supreme Court,” Carballo charges in his writing this Wednesday, where he insists on accusing the magistrate of having “artificially prolonged” and “delayed” the sending of his appeal to the Criminal Chamber of the Court, which was not raised until mid-December — a delay that was endorsed by the judge who replaced García-Castellón during the time that he remained sidelined due to the challenge presented against him by various defenses—and that a resolution is still pending.
This confrontation reaches such a point that the prosecutor put another criticism on the table on Wednesday: “At least in appearance, in the foundations of some of his resolutions, the instructor confuses the Tsunami phenomenon with the CDR [Committees of Defense]. of the Republic, investigated in another summary], when it involves absolutely different entities or actions.”
Carballo, a member of the conservative Association of Prosecutors, is the same prosecutor who accuses of terrorism the 12 members of the CDR who supposedly created a “radical cell”, called the Tactical Response Team (ERT), to “achieve independence, using for this violence.”
And he was the representative of the public ministry that maintained the accusation of rebellion against Josep Lluís Trapero,
major
of the Mossos d'Esquadra, until the final phase of the trial, where he was acquitted.
García-Castellón also sent strong messages to the prosecutor in his latest resolutions.
The judge reproached Carballo for stating that his decisions “lack foundation” and invited him to “illustrate himself” with the “content of the more than 100 pages that make up the explanatory statement” sent to the Supreme Court.
Along these lines, after highlighting the “violent” nature of the Tsunami protests and delving into the fact that they allegedly intended to “subvert the constitutional order,” the magistrate also reproached him for having to be “insisting” on the public ministry, “a body that has "by mission 'to promote the action of justice in defense of legality', on the forcefulness, quantity and clarity of the evidence that allows the initial classification for the crime of terrorism to be sustained."
“This singular fact must be reflected upon,” said the instructor.
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