The head of the court of inquiry 1 in Barcelona, ??Joaquín Aguirre, signed on April 5 an interlocutory summons to declare as investigated the former commissioner of the National Police José Manuel, the former chief inspector Antonio Giménez Raso and the detective who worked for the previous ones, Julián Peribáñez. The letter, to which La Vanguardia has had access, cites all three in September after the magistrate agreed to consider the appeal presented by detective Francisco Marco, who since 2013 has been fighting in court to prove that his arrest and the attempt to destruction of his detective agency, Método 3, was “illegal” and the target of Operation Catalunya.
The judge responds to the latest letter from the Audiencia de Barcelona, ??which in March of last year revoked the same judge’s previous decision not to investigate the alleged illegal detention, among other crimes, that the manager of Método 3 reported at the time.
There are a few pieces that in different central courts in Madrid affect the investigation of Operation Catalunya, the maneuvers that the police leadership allegedly made outside the law during the Mariano Rajoy Government against independence and to cover up and obstruct the corruption investigations on the PP.
In recent years, several affected people have seen how their complaints or complaints were dismissed. Sandro Rosell was the last to try, but in November of last year the 13th District Court of Madrid filed the investigation he was leading on Operation Catalunya following the complaint that the former president of Barça had filed against Villarejo and other National Police officers accused of being involved in the alleged issuance and presentation of “false” reports that led the National Court to send him to provisional prison.
The history of Method 3 goes back a long way. On February 18, 2013, the National Police arrested, among others, Francisco Marco and searched the headquarters of his agency in Barcelona. Marco was released hours later and the case was dismissed. Since then, the detective has filed more than a dozen complaints and denunciations to prove that his arrest was “illegal”, that it was carried out in the context of Operation Catalunya and that “evidence was fabricated false” and, even more importantly, to access the archive of the work done by their detectives. In June of last year, Marco’s lawyer presented a report retrieving extracts from Villarejo’s diaries, among other documents, which supported his accusations.
At the time, the central court 5 of the National Court in Madrid opened a separate piece to investigate the illegal origin of the memory stick with information about the Pujol family after national police said it came from Método 3 .During the instruction, Marco testified, he denied his relationship with that terminal and the data. The process ended with the conviction of the deputy director of the Police, Eugenio Pino, to one year in prison.
Marco then filed a complaint in the courts of Barcelona against a couple of former employees of his agency for their possible connection with Villarejo and Antonio Giménez Raso. The complaint went to the court of Aguirre, which tried to inhibit itself. He unsuccessfully sent the case to the central courts of Madrid, and tried to get his fellow investigator from 10, Miriam de Rosa, who at the time searched the headquarters of Método 3 for an affair with the Treasury, to take on the complaint . After many comings and goings, in November 2022 he signed the refusal to reopen proceedings. Marco did not give up and presented an appeal in which the Barcelona Court ruled in his favor and ordered Aguirre to reassess the documentary evidence provided by the detective.
Finally, Aguirre has decided to reopen the case, summon the three indicated by Marco to testify as investigated and review the documentation provided by the director of Método 3. If the case goes ahead, it will be the first related to Operation Catalunya, after to file Rosell’s.
