Rejects an appeal against the Democratic Tsunami investigations
The Spanish judicial curia continues to be intransigent and hostile to the Catalan independence movement. This is demonstrated by the latest resolution of the appeals room of the National Court, which has denied an appeal presented by the defense of businessman Oriol Soler, represented by Benet Salellas, with the support of the fiscal ministry, led by Miguel Angel Carballo. The appeal requested that the investigative proceedings ordered by the investigating judge of the Central Court of Inquiry number 6 of the National Court, Manuel García Castellón, be stopped in relation to the cause of the Democratic Tsunami. Proceedings which, according to the defense and the prosecution, altered the guarantees and rights of the defendants.
A surprising and extravagant argument
The appeals court, presided over by magistrate Félix Alfonso Guevara, has issued a short four-page resolution, to which this media has had access, rejecting Soler’s appeal. The reason he alleges is, to say the least, curious and extravagant. According to the magistrates, only the decisions that do not admit proceedings, but not those that admit them, can be appealed. In other words, they give carte blanche to any investigating judge to practice the tests they deem appropriate, without any limit or control, and more so in a case like that of the Democratic Tsunami, which involves, according to some defenses, “shooting into the bush to see if the Vietnamese skips.” In other words, a prospective investigation that accumulates in proceedings 85/19, which neither the defense nor the prosecution could assess or propose that they not be carried out, even if they entailed a violation of rights.
An uncontrolled instruction
In fact, Soler’s appeal brief asked the judiciary to put a stop to an excessive instruction. “It is urgent that the Criminal Chamber imposes limits, controls and guarantees,” he said. He thus requested that the proceedings that had been agreed be denied and “to discipline the file, focus it on its procedural object and, therefore, in view of having exhausted the instruction, definitively close the investigation.”
The Supreme, the great ally
The resolution, handed down last March 8, of the appeals room also attacks the defense and the prosecutor’s office for their request to stop the investigations and even to file the case. The argument of the magistrates is the decision of the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court to initiate the criminal case against the president in exile Carles Puigdemont and the secretary of the Bureau of the Parliament, the republican Ruben Wagensberg for the crimes of terrorism. A decision that, according to the magistrates, invalidates the argument of “the non-existence of typical criminal facts” in the investigation of the case.
