The judge of the National Court María Tardón has sent a rogatory commission to Israel in which she requests judicial assistance from the authorities of that country in order for them to provide the court with all the information they have collected in relation to the authorship of the events, as well as such as the report regarding the claim for the attack carried out on October 7 by the terrorist organization Hamas and which caused the death of the two Spaniards Maya Villalobo and Iván Illarramendi, as well as the latter’s partner.
In her order, the judge explains that the Civil Guard reports collected by the prosecutor in his request for dismissal frame what happened in a context of information uncertainty typical of the type of violent actions and war scenarios, so the clarification of the facts and determining their specific authorship.
However, the judge indicates that we cannot fail to take into consideration, as the private accusations brought in this case have raised, that the right to information constitutes one of the basic rights of the crime victim, as It is included in the Victim Statute, which should lead to this instruction, says Tardón, “to the exhaustion of all investigation possibilities, gathering as much information as could be provided in this regard by the judicial authorities that could be competent in Israel, in whose territory the events took place.”
All of this, according to the instructor, without prejudice to the fact that the dismissal requested by the Prosecutor’s Office will finally have to be agreed if a positive result is not obtained regarding the circumstances in which the deaths of the Spanish citizens occurred, as well as their possible authorship.
It was last October when the National Court agreed to the secrecy of the investigation into the death of Maya Villalobo and what at that time was considered the kidnapping of Iván Illarramendi after the attacks perpetrated in the State of Israel and in the Palestinian territories of Gaza and West Bank.
Tardón accepted the case upon understanding that the National Court was the competent court to investigate these events. It should be remembered that Villalobo was serving in the Israeli forces as a holder of dual nationality, and that Illarramendi, 46, lived in the Kissufim kibbutz, near Gaza.
The latter disappeared along with his wife, a Chilean national, whom the magistrate also agreed to include in the investigation. But last November it was confirmed that both were murdered by Hamas during the terrorist attack on October 7 and at no time were they kidnapped, according to what Israeli diplomatic sources told Europa Press. The bodies of both were identified just a month after the terrorist attack.
The Association of Victims of Terrorism (AVT), appearing in the case as a popular accusation, opposed the dismissal requested by the Prosecutor’s Office in a document – to which this news agency also had access – on the understanding that it should be requested beforehand. the judicial authorities of Israel all the information relating to these events.
Thus, it was interesting that the investigation procedures requested by the Head of the Information Service of the Civil Guard in November be agreed upon and that included issuing an international rogatory commission to obtain “information related to the investigation carried out by the Israeli authorities, including the expert report or judicial dossier prepared by the Israeli Prosecutor’s Office that explains the causes and circumstances of the death of Maya Villalobo, Iván Illarramendi and Loren Pamela Gargovich – his wife – in the national territory of Israel.
The AVT recalled that the investigators had also requested the National Court to obtain from Israel the report prepared “on the authorship of the events, as well as a report relating to the claim for the attack in the national territory of Israel perpetrated (…) by the terrorist organization Hamas”.
For the association, it was “necessary to incorporate relevant information from the Israeli judicial authorities about how the events developed and their responsibility in order to be able to offer official information to the victims’ families.”
It also warned that the origin of most of the data available came from “open sources”, mainly media and public communications from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.