The two judges who are conditioning the future of the negotiation of the amnesty law – Manuel García Castellón, head of court number 6 of the National Court and Joaquín Aguirre, of investigation number 1 of Barcelona – have a common thread in their procedure in investigations that they direct or have directed linked to the police plot that acted illegally in the Ministry of the Interior of the Government of Mariano Rajoy, whose best-known member is the former commissioner José Manuel Villarejo.
This common thread between the two is summarized in Aguirre’s proximity to the activities of that corrupt police plot, with the common objective of accusing Trapero of dealings with drug trafficking and García Castellón’s refusal to investigate these illegal actions when the Catalan police force Security denounced them because this magistrate was the investigator of the Tándem case, focused on the illegalities of Villarejo, the Tándem case.
This is clear from the complaint filed on the 12th by Trapero at the Barcelona Prosecutor’s Office after publishing La Vanguardia and eldiario.es two informative notes by Villarejo and in a database on police investigations.
Trapero’s 45-page document states that since 2009, during the investigation of various cases on drug trafficking and police corruption in the protection of prostitution establishments, Villarejo and his cronies decided to act against him, who was then head of the Division. criminal investigation of the Mossos. The reason? Having caused the arrest or accusation of police friends or associates of yours. To prove this, he provides known recordings in the Tándem case and the latest information published recently, which talks about inventing a false case against him, tapping his phones, preparing false reports and finally denouncing him at the National Court.
According to Trapero, these documents “reveal that a series of allegedly criminal activities were carried out that targeted me and people who were under my command at the time, falsely attributing criminal acts to me, with the intention of discrediting me.”
Finally, Villarejo and his colleagues chose to interfere in Judge Aguirre’s investigation of the cases and seek to have him charge the Mossos officer. He had already staged visible clashes with Trapero. According to the complaint, “there were certain disagreements with the investigating judge arising from his intention to intervene in the communications of all the members of the Civil Guard [who had seized a shipment of 45 kilos of cocaine in the Cerberus case], but verbally asking the Mossos d’Esquadra attached unit [led by Trapero] that this request be made through a police letter, a request to which I responded personally in the sense that I did not see sufficient motivation to do so but that if the judge ordered it through interlocutory That’s how it would be done. This interlocutory was never issued and from that moment on the relationship with the attached Unit was broken.”
In May 2011, Judge Aguirre charged “practically all of the agents and commanders of the attached Unit.” They were in that situation for ten years, until the case against them was finally dismissed.
Trapero provides parts of the Prosecutor’s Office’s writings describing the judge’s behavior: “As the judge’s evidence, supposedly incontestable, weakened to the point of evanescence, a different one was presented.” Some very descriptive of his instruction methods: “During the course of the investigation, he developed a deep prejudice that led him to support his theory and enrich it by deciding without limit on new procedures as those carried out did not offer the desired result. ”. This, according to his critics, would also be the practice applied in the Volhov case, by which with successive changes in the meaning of the instruction he intends to charge the former president of the Generalitat, Carles Puigdemont, with high treason.
The former head of the Mossos explains in his complaint that “members of the prosecution itself had explained to me that the will and intention of the investigating judge was my accusation, a fact that I was spreading in these circles without any discretion.”
And in February 2015, Judge Aguirre asked the Case Analysis and Review Brigade of the Deputy Operational Directorate (DAO) of the police to analyze the case. Precisely this Brigade was one of the first levers that was activated in the Ministry of the Interior when launching the Catalunya operation, among other initiatives sending agents to Barcelona to ask the prosecutors of the Palau case to register the CDC headquarters less than one month before the Catalan elections of 2012.
In September 2021, when some recordings of Commissioner Villarejo were published in which he spoke openly with other police officers, some of whom were investigated in the Barcelona cases, about the assembly of a false case against Trapero, the General Commissioner of Investigation of the Mossos d’Esquadra , sent a report to Judge García Castellón, in case he considered that the facts referred to could be part of the Tándem case.
Contrary to what has happened in other cases, the judge responded relatively quickly to the Catalan police. As stated in Trapero’s complaint, on November 2, 2021, García Castellón responded to Mayor Toni Rodríguez, signatory of the report, that “the only indication on which the notification to his court was based was the existence of a conversation between several people, among whom was former commissioner Villarejo and in which the will or purpose of carrying out a series of acts to discredit third parties was revealed, even attributing to them the commission of crimes, but no evidence was provided. “that corroborated that the aforementioned plan was carried out, nor that, consequently, the expressions uttered had been executed.”
That is, three police officers, active law enforcement agents, all accused in countless separate pieces precisely for illegal activities linked to blackmail, extortion and manipulation of information, meet, talk about an illegal plan against a high-ranking official. The Catalan police and the judge handling the main case consider that there are no reasons to think that the plan was carried out. Final point.