The Fiscal Council agreed this Wednesday to grant the protection that prosecutor Álvaro Redondo had requested after feeling attacked by an article published in The world. In that article he was accused of being “complicit in a corrupt exchange” and of putting on an “obscene spectacle” for signing the report in which he opposed the Democratic Tsunami case was investigated as terrorism since Carles Puigdemont was accused of it. The amparo has gone ahead due to the casting vote of the State Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, since the six members of the Association of Prosecutors (AF)—the majority in the race, with a conservative tendency and with which Redondo is associated— They have not considered it necessary for the body to publicly defend their partner. The two natural members of the Fiscal Council (the lieutenant prosecutor and the head of the Inspection), the two members of the Progressive Union of Prosecutors (UPF) and the member of the Independent Association of Prosecutors have supported granting the protection.
Redondo was the prosecutor appointed, in turn, to write the response of the Prosecutor’s Office to the reasoned statement sent to the Supreme Court by the judge of the National Court Manuel García-Castellón. In this reasoned statement, the judge asked the high court to take on the case because it affected two qualified persons: Puigdemont, due to his status as a MEP, and Ruben Wagensberg, a member of the Catalan Parliament. The letter sent by Redondo to the Board of Prosecutors of the Supreme Court advocated leaving both out of the case and ruled out that the facts of the Tsunami case fit into the crime of terrorism. It was the same criterion that the prosecutor in charge of this case at the National Court, Miguel Ángel Carballo, also a member of the conservative AF, had maintained. But on the same day that Álvaro Redondo’s opinion was released, a previous draft was also leaked in which Redondo himself maintained the opposite conclusion—that there was terrorism and that Puigdemont should be charged—which led to some sectors of the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office were accused of having changed his mind after meeting with the attorney general.
Redondo and García Ortiz gave extensive explanations in which they maintained that, when the meeting between them took place, the position of the prosecutor in charge of the case was already the one he maintained in the final report—opposed to charging Puigdemont—and they denied any influence of the attorney general at work in Redondo. “I did not receive, not just an instruction, but even a minimal suggestion from the State Attorney General about the legal position that he should assume,” Redondo said in a statement. One day after the controversy over the leak of the draft reached the media, on February 5, the Board of Criminal Prosecutors of the Supreme Court debated Redondo’s official report and overturned it by a large majority: 12 votes to 3 in favor to investigate the cause as terrorism and 11 votes to 4 in favor of involving Puigdemont. The discrepancy between the two chief prosecutors led to leaving the final decision in the hands of the lieutenant prosecutor, María Ángeles Sánchez Conde, who supported Redondo’s position. However, finally, the Supreme Court has opened a case for terrorism against Puigdemont, despite the opinion against the Prosecutor’s Office.
The prosecutor’s actions were strongly criticized by some conservative media, and Redondo has claimed protection for an article signed by Jorge Bustos in the newspaper The world in which he is accused of being “complicit in a corrupt exchange that suspends the application of the law and shields impunity” and of giving the “obscene spectacle of a servant of Justice demoted to a servant of Power.” “Is it worth selling out to the most arbitrary government of democracy? With you in Berlin the emperor’s whim would have known no limit. With heroes like you, Spanish democracy does not need enemies,” the journalist added.
“Proven ethical integrity”
The prosecutor sent his request for protection to the Board of Prosecutors of the Supreme Court, but the two bosses (Fidel Cadena and Joaquín Sánchez-Covisa) agreed to refer it to the Fiscal Council because it is the competent body to grant this protection, which is more symbolic than effective. Cadena was in charge of sending the request with a text in which he made a close defense of Redondo, despite the fact that Cadena himself was one of those who, at the Board of Prosecutors on February 6, defended the accusation of terrorism against Puigdemont. Redondo, Cadena points out, “is a clear example of a prosecutor endowed with legal excellence and proven ethical integrity.” The criminal chief praises the “erudite and laborious report” that Redondo presented and considers it proven that he did so “without any influence on his conclusions that would not have emanated from his legitimate change of professional opinion, the result of the progressive depth of his study and of the intellectual and legal contributions that his investigation of the truth provided him.”
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This text was seen this Wednesday in the Fiscal Council along with Redondo’s request for protection, but the six members of the AF, according to sources consulted, have considered that there were no reasons to support their partner and that freedom of expression should prevail. press and information. The vote of the members of this body has been tied and the casting vote of the attorney general has been necessary to unblock it.
The Fiscal Council will meet again this Thursday and has another matter on the table that could fully impact the investigation of the caso Tsunami: the candidacy of the prosecutor of the National Court who is handling this case, Miguel Ángel Carballo, to be appointed chief prosecutor of Ciudad Real. Prosecutor’s sources indicate that Carballo has many options to obtain the position, which would force the representative of the public ministry to change in the case being instructed by Judge Manuel García-Castellón, where the investigation for terrorism on the defendants who are not qualified will continue. —among them, Marta Rovira, general secretary of ERC— once the Supreme Court has only taken on the investigation into Puigdemont and Wagensberg.
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