Extensions of investigations at the court of Manuel Garcia Castellón have caused problems for the magistrate in the recent past. This Monday's file the whole Democratic Tsunami affair For extending the case beyond the deadline, there are other precedents that can be found in the Villarejo case and in that of the tribute to ETA prisoners. In both cases, as in the Tsunami, the Criminal Chamber, a higher body than the judge, modified the plan at the head of the Investigation Court number 6 of the National Court, but without this leading to the filing of the cases, as happened in the case of accusation of terrorism as a result of the protests against the verdict of the trial.
In March of the same year, the Chamber annulled the decision by which Manuel Garcia Castellón intended to conduct research into one of the branches of the 'Villarejo case': the one who analyses whether a businessman hired the retired commissioner to blackmail his ex-partner. In that case, the Chamber reminded the judge that he could “in no way” add six more months to a case that had been going on for four and a half years, just by waiting for Romania to send information about the case.
The seventh extension of this piece, apart from the Tándem case, one of the least known and least publically projected of the dozens that emerged from the arrest of José Manuel Villarejo in 2017did not pass the ICC filter, not because of the failure to meet the deadlines, but because of the failure to meet the legal requirements for signing it.
File number 14 of the Tándem case, dubbed Project Ámbar, has been open since September 2019 and in it, Judge García Castellón investigates whether a businessman and owner of a restaurant in Madrid paid 300,000 euros to José Manuel Villarejo to extort his ex-partner. A cause in which it is also being investigated whether Carlos Salamancaformer chief commissioner of Barajas airport, enjoyed luxury trips that the businessman paid for with money from Switzerland.
García Castellón himself explained in an order that the previous extension, from July 2023, was intended to initiate this procedure, but he also regretted that Romania has not yet responded and still needs six months to receive the answer. And he justified this extension on several points: having to wait for information from that country, but also that, once the information has been analyzed, he may have to initiate more procedures. Part 14 of the Tándem case, according to the judge, is “dynamic, active and complex” and its extension for the seventh time is “more than justified”.
The judges overseeing the case reminded García Castellón that Article 324 of the Criminal Procedure Act, which the extension of lawsuitshas a specific article for these types of cases: if the diligence has been requested in time, its result is still valid.
However, the instructor did not agree to new procedures, nor did he indicate that he had to implement other procedures. “The response of the Romanian authorities can be assessed as being within the extended investigation period,” the Chamber argued. But trying to extend the case by initiating a hypothetical procedure, they criticized, would “and thus be contrary to the aim of temporarily shortening the investigation of criminal cases.”
“An inquisitorial investigation”
A week later, the judges of the Criminal Court that García Castellón relied on ruled an “absolutely untimely” request of the Dignity and Justice association, supported by the PP as a popular accusation, to investigate a Telegram channel managed by Sortu in the case of paying tribute to ETA prisoners.
It is a case that was opened in 2018 after a complaint from the association Dignity and Justice: a procedure that has been investigating for more than five years the possible glorification of terrorism in the organization of the 'ongi etorris', tribute to the prisoners of the gang. ETA terrorist when they leave prison. As elDiario.es explained last January, the magistrate decided to close the investigation to sign the extension exactly upon request of the complaining association, chaired by Daniel Portero, son of a fatal victim of the terrorist group and PP deputy in the Madrid Assembly.
Portero’s request, which was joined by the popular accusation of the PP, included new procedures to investigate the contents of a Telegram chat managed by Sortu, the central party of the EH Bildu coalition. He justified this in reports from the Guardia Civil that had led him to “review the procedure” and extend the case, while acknowledging that closing the investigation in October 2023 was “premature”. In that same car, he went to Telegram to request information about that channel.
The Public Prosecution Service appealed against this decision and accused the magistrate of starting an 'inquisitorial' investigation about this tribute to ETA prisoners. The Court did not go that far, but left it in black and white that García Castellón had the duty to explain “reasonably” why he had to prolong a case, and what “concrete procedures” he needed. In this case, the request for procedure from the Portero association was “absolutely too late” and was still used by the judge to restart the case.
That request, the Criminal Chamber accused, was based on a report from the Guardia Civil from February 2023. A report that was long overdue and that had already led to several extensions of the case. The popular accusations, including the PP, had not requested action on that report for months until the end of last year. Eight months later. Access to this procedure and the extension of the case, according to the Criminal Chamber, is “contrary” to the purpose of the investigation deadlines.
García Castellón, the Chamber continued, only then saw the “necessity, usefulness and relevance” of continuing this procedure or extending the case, until in January of this year he understood that he had closed the case prematurely. His order suffered from a “lack of legal basis” and the case should remain closed. If he wanted to bring the case to court, he would have to do so with the evidence he already had, and without anything related to the premature request for information he had made to Telegram about the channel Sortu.
Last April, García Castellón, on the orders of the Criminal Court, proposed to sentence only six people as perpetrators of a persistent crime of humiliation of the victims of terrorism and glorification of those who participated in terrorist acts of the organization of tribute to ETA prisoners between 2016 and 2020.