The lawyer of former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont has asked to remove the judge from the Volhov case, regarding Russia’s alleged support for the process, due to its “delirious persecution” of the independence movement and demands that his interview with German television, in which he spoke about this cause that instructs.
The lawyer Gonzalo Boye has presented a brief to the court, in which on behalf of the investigated Josep Lluís Alay, Puigdemont’s advisor, he raises the challenge of the head of the investigating court number 1 of Barcelona, ??Joaquín Aguirre, for his “lack of impartiality” , which he believes is accredited in his interview, and the “rudeness” in his interrogations.
Aguirre spoke about Russia’s alleged interference in the process in an interview broadcast last Monday on the news program Tagesschau, from the German public television consortium, the same day he issued an order in which he insisted on Puigdemont’s contacts with the Kremlin. , which could lead to a crime of treason, not included in the PSOE amnesty law proposal.
According to Boye, who is a lawyer for both Puigdemont and Alay, Judge Aguirre has had a “rude and grotesque” performance that “not only destroys the appearance of impartiality, but is detrimental to the jurisdictional function,” from what he sees. impossible” for “one more minute to continue wasting public resources in a delirious persecution of a markedly prospective nature and clear political orientation.”
Puigdemont’s lawyer denounces that the judge “allows himself the luxury” of granting an interview to German public television in which he speaks about the procedure he is conducting, “without the slightest hint of impartiality or modesty,” with the ” “exclusive purpose” of generating a story “that serves to continue supporting a delirious version of something that has never existed”, in reference to the contacts with supposed Russian emissaries to gather support for the process.
With this interview, according to the brief, Judge Aguirre has demonstrated an absolute loss of impartiality” when speaking about what his “persecutory thesis” is.
Furthermore, he points out that in this case there was a “perfectly orchestrated maneuver” so that the broadcast of the interview coincided with that of his order last Monday, in which he extended the investigation for six more months, after insisting that Puigdemont and his entourage They maintained “close personal relations” with German and Italian far-right politicians and with Russia, willing to support “economically and militarily” the independence of Catalonia.
The judge issued the extension of the case the day before Congress overthrew in a vote the amnesty law that, in accordance with the PSOE proposal, would exclude not only the crimes of terrorism, but also those of treason or against peace or the independence of the State, both of which are the responsibility of the National Court.
In his letter, Alay’s lawyer requests that a European investigation order be issued to obtain from German public television the originals of the interview with Judge Aguirre and that the date on which it was recorded, where and who participated in it be specified. and a statement is taken from the channel’s correspondent to explain when he found out about its existence and how.
“Sooner rather than later it will be shown that the interview was not even casual or an act of irresponsibility inappropriate for someone who exercises the jurisdictional function, but rather something much more serious, a prior arrangement,” says Boye.
At the same time, the brief also refers to the “rude” statements that Judge Aguirre made during the interrogation of another of the investigated persons, the former head of international relations at CDC Víctor Terradellas, in May 2022, in which according to Boye he intervened “without blush, decorum or even the slightest respect for one’s own jurisdictional function”.
Specifically, as revealed this Thursday by the digital elmon.cat, during the interrogation Aguirre made comments about Puigdemont with terms such as “weak and cowardly”, he stated that after the DUI vote in October 2017 the former president “marched in the trunk of a car in a state of panic” and that the independentists “needed both the Mossos and the 10,000 Russian soldiers to ‘control the territory.’
“Rarely has there been such obvious proof of a lack of impartiality, but in this case, it is combined with a level of rudeness that is inappropriate for the function he performs and which, in addition, resorts to commonplaces of the worst of atavistic machismos.” “says Boye, alluding to the judge’s comments following Terradellas’ expression that Puigdemont “shit his panties.”
In his appeal, Boye admits that the judge is “without a doubt, sovereign in his heart to think, or not think, what he considers most appropriate,” since in a democratic society “it would be unacceptable to ask that judges, as well as the rest of the citizens do not have a specific political or even ideological opinion”.
However, he warns that in a democratic society it is “required” that a judge’s opinion “not be made public without waiting for the legal consequences, because that affects the image of impartiality that every person called to prosecute must have.” Therefore, he insists that Aguirre must be removed from the case.
For the lawyer, the magistrate’s statements “not only demonstrate his interest in the lawsuit, but also his absolute lack of impartiality and decorum, in particular by advancing his position towards those under investigation.”
