The Court exonerates Cospedal and sends the former Interior dome to trial for espionage on Bárcenas

The former leadership of the Ministry of the Interior will go to trial for the Kitchen operation.

The Criminal Chamber of the National Court has dismissed all the appeals filed against the decision to go to the abbreviated procedure of the

and has confirmed the evidence to judge the former leadership of the Ministry of the Interior, including former Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz, for the police operation launched with the aim of stealing from the PP treasurer Luis Bárcenas material related to box B of the conservative formation.

In thirteen orders, notified this Wednesday, the magistrates fully dismiss the appeals presented by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, the PSOE and Podemos political parties and those investigated against the order of Judge Manuel García Castellón on July 29 in which he closed the instruction of this separate piece of the Tandem case and proposed trying eleven people.

In addition to Fernández Díaz, the instructor considered that the former Secretary of State for Security Francisco Martínez, the former Deputy Director of Operations Eugenio Pino, the police officers José Luis Olivera, Marcelino Martín Blas, José Ángel Fuentes Gago, Bonifacio Díez Sevillano, Enrique García Castaño, Andrés Manuel Gómez Gordo, as well as the commissioner José Manuel Villarejo and the driver from Bárcenas Sergio Ríos.

The facts, in the opinion of the instructor, could constitute the crimes of discovery and disclosure of secrets, prevarication, omission of the duty to prosecute crimes, bribery, influence peddling and embezzlement.

In its appeal, the Prosecutor's Office argued that the judicial investigation into this separate piece of 'Tándem' had been hastily closed because there were pending issues, including some measures requested to fully clarify the facts and that would affect some of those investigated. for which the case was filed.

Specifically, Anticorruption saw the dismissal of Cospedal, of her husband, Ignacio López del Hierro, as extemporaneous;

and asked to cite as investigated the former director of the Police Ignacio Cosidó.

In relation to the request to revoke the file of the case for Cospedal and her husband, the order examines all the conversations, notes and messages that, according to the prosecutor, would prove their involvement in the events and concludes that there are not sufficient indications of their participation in the events. investigated, since they are weakened by the testimonies of the investigated Villarejo Sergio Ríos and Andrés Manuel Gómez Gordo.

The Chamber appreciates that the recognition of Cospedal and López del Hierro of their meetings with Villarejo for "issues outside the facts investigated."

For this reason, the court shares the reasoning of the investigating judge when it closed the case for them based on the doctrine of the Supreme Court according to which the writ of transformation to an abbreviated procedure is a filter in the hands of the investigating judge to purge the procedural object and expel by means of the dismissal of those investigated facts not supported by well-founded indications of commission and thus continue the process with respect to those that have a solid evidence base, avoiding the opening of unnecessary trials.

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