A new step in the complaint
A group of 14 of the 33 Catalan judges who in February 2014 signed a manifesto in favor of the right to decide in Catalonia has filed a new complaint. According to RAC1 and a source has been able to confirm, the judges have presented the complaint to the Catalan Prosecutor’s Office. In the brief, the magistrates allege that they have documentary evidence about the people who illegally leaked around twenty photographs of their ID in 2014. These photographs were later published on the front page of the newspaper La Razón.
The prior legal process
It should be remembered that after the publication of the photographs, the judges presented a joint complaint to the Barcelona court, but the process was archived. However, in April 2016, the Madrid Court ruled against the admission of the complaint. Faced with this situation, the magistrates took their case to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which ruled in their favor two years ago. The ECtHR condemned the Spanish State for violating the right to privacy of the judges and magistrates who appeared in the article published in March 2014 under the title ‘The conspiracy of the 33 sovereignist judges’. According to the ruling of the court based in Strasbourg, the publication of the photographs without consent violated the right to privacy of those affected.
New evidence presented
Among the new evidence presented by the judges are recordings made by former Spanish police commissioner José Manuel Villarejo. These audios, which were known two weeks ago, contain conversations between Villarejo, Eugenio Pino and Pedro Esteban, senior officers of the Spanish police in Catalonia. The magistrates attach these audios as evidence, as well as notes from Villarejo’s agendas that refer to the leak of his DNI photos.
The Supreme Court ruling
On January 9, the Supreme Court ordered to reopen the case of the data leak of the sovereigntist judges, thus amending the decision of the National Court. The Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) had closed the investigation ten years ago, but the magistrates appealed the decision. The Supreme Court ruled that the AEPD should reopen the investigation, since it was a case in which the data had been processed without the authorization of the magistrates and had been leaked in La Razón. The court considered that it was necessary to investigate whether the archiving decision was justified.