The Attorney General of the State, Álvaro García Ortiz, warned yesterday in Barcelona, ??where he met with the superior prosecutor of Catalonia, Francisco Bañeres, and the rest of the provincial chief prosecutors, in charge of counting how many cases were investigated, sentenced and archived could take advantage of the amnesty, that there is still no decision made on the imputation of Carles Puigdemont in the cause of the Tsunami.
After the board of prosecutors rejected on Tuesday the preliminary report of prosecutor Álvaro Redondo and appreciated indications to investigate the ex-president for terrorism, García Ortiz admitted yesterday that there may be “discrepancies”, but stressed that the position of the public ministry does not it is defined and work must be done to “put together a unit of criteria”.
“We will see what is the meaning of who has the difficult task of resolving controversies, of resolving the discrepancies that exist in the Spanish Prosecutor’s Office as in any other institution”, he explained.
The person in charge of drawing up the new report will be the lieutenant prosecutor of the Supreme Court, Ángeles Sánchez Conde, the second in the hierarchy of the Prosecutor’s Office, and it will be sent directly to the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court, without going through the board of prosecutors. “She must be allowed to work in peace”, claimed García Ortiz. The lieutenant prosecutor of the Supreme Court will have to define the position of the Prosecutor’s Office after the two chief prosecutors of the Supreme Court voted differently on Tuesday, which invalidated them to take on the new report. “We have a discrepancy between two prosecutors of the Chamber and that must be resolved by the hierarchy, and, on the other hand, we have a Prosecutor’s Office specialized in terrorism that is defending a thesis before the courts (contrary to Puigdemont’s imputation for terrorism)”. he emphasized, and recalled that there are “several legal theses sustained in the reasoned exposition and the knowledge of the evidence that have been maintained over the years”. “Now we have to see what the position of the Prosecutor’s Office is”, he emphasized.
The board of prosecutors considered that there are indications of a crime of terrorism by twelve votes to three, and eleven of its members believe that there are enough indications for the Supreme Court to investigate Puigdemont against four who rejected it.
In addition, the attorney general referred to the radio interview in which prosecutor Salvador Viada denounced that the discrepancies between the two chief prosecutors of the Supreme Court amounted to “a covert 155”. García Ortiz stated that “it is surprising that someone who has participated in a meeting of prosecutors can go to the media to reveal what had happened.”
