The former Minister of the Interior Jorge Fernandez Diaz has complained to the judge of the Kitchen case, Manuel García Castellónto provisionally suspend the period granted to present his defense brief until it is determined whether the instructor committed “an error” in the order to open the oral trial for which he must sit on the dock for the alleged espionage to the former treasurer of the PP Luis Bárcenas.
In a writing, to which he has had access THE NEWSPAPER OF SPAINfrom the Prensa Ibérica group, the former minister’s lawyer, Jesús Mandri Zárate justifies this request after he himself and other defenders of those investigated, including his former number two in the Ministry, Francisco Martínez, presented different appeals warning of possible failures by García Castellón: “If the same are upheld, the annulment of the order to open the oral trial would mean the annulment of the writings of provisional conclusions formulated at a later date,” warns Mandri.
Garcia Castellon
This lawyer maintains that García Castellón agreed to prosecute the leadership of the Ministry of the Interior with an abbreviated procedure, and according to the law, this only applies to the prosecution of crimes punishable by sentences not exceeding nine years in prison. On the contrary, the ordinary summary procedure is for crimes punishable by sentences exceeding nine years.
Fernández Díaz’s lawyer had also warned the instructor of another action that he considered erroneous. Specifically, that the judge included in his order opening Kitchen’s oral trial the request of Bárcenas’ wife, Rosalía Iglesias Villar, that she consider Fernández Díaz a necessary cooperator in three crimes of kidnapping for which the false priest Enrique Olivares had already been convicted. This man, who died in January 2022, was considered guilty of the assault on the home of the former PP treasurer. This crime provides for up to ten years in prison, which is why it also exceeds the 9-year limit of abbreviated procedures.
For all this, explains lawyer Mandri, the definitive inclusion or exclusion in the order opening the oral trial of the crimes mentioned in the annulment incident “will undoubtedly affect the content of the defense document that this procedural representation will formulate, and the evidence that must be requested therein, a reason that reinforces the need to suspend the period granted to the defenses to formulate writings of provisional conclusions”.