On June 9, The Mossos d’Esquadra deployed a macro device to arrest to the main members of the Casuals, ultra group of FC Barcelona born within the Boixos Nois and which is considered an organized structure. The investigations against this organization began following the attack, on November 28, 2021, against the Los Cazadores bar, in Cornellà de Llobregat, where there were Espanyol fans. From that day on, the police closely followed the movements of Barça’s radical followers and, by order of a court in Cornellà, microphones were installed in vehicles of at least one ringleader of the plot, to record their conversations. Now, the defense has requested the annulment of this evidence because it is indiscriminate and unlimited, when it should have been limited to specific meetings. If the Barcelona Court agrees, the investigation and several of the criminal proceedings against them are in danger, since several judicial proceedings were opened based on these wiretaps.
According to the police report included in the main case against the Casuals, which is being processed by the Investigative Court number 12 of Barcelona, the Mossos, in collaboration with the National Police, and after months of surveillance and wiretapping, they concluded that the organization Casuals FCBwhich was already dismantled in 2010, had become active again after its main leaders left prison and adapted to the cannabis boom that has been experienced in Spain, and specifically Catalonia, since 2015.
The operation carried out in June against that resurgence was baptized by the police with the name of Hydra, the mythological being with several heads that was capable of regenerating itself every time it severed one of its necks. 27 people were arrested and several were imprisoned. The agents did not find the leader, Ricardo Mateo, at his home, although he was arrested after a month. The case of the 12th Investigative Court was opened for a range of alleged crimes, from homicide, to kidnapping and extortion, to drug trafficking and membership in a criminal organization, among others.
The defense of one of those investigated has gone directly to uproot incriminating evidence. One of the lawyers has filed an appeal requesting the annulment of the court orders from the Cornellà court that authorized the use of a sound system for two vehicles. In his opinion, the Investigative Court number 12 of Barcelona, which has incorporated these resolutions into the case, has relied “excessively” on the case. of the “disproportionate” use of the installation of microphones in two vehicles supposedly used by one of their ringleaders.
“Unfiltered” conversations
The lawyer maintains in his appeal, to which EL PERIÓDICO has had access, that, according to the Criminal Procedure Law, The adoption of this measure must be linked to “very specific meetings.” that are going to take place or are planned between the person under investigation and other people. That is, there are no authorizations to capture and record conversations of a “general or indiscriminate nature.”
Related news
According to the defense, the Cornellà court rulings that endorsed this practice do not establish which “specific or specific” meetings they want to intercept and, therefore, the intervention of the communications that were going to be had inside the sound vehicles. The lawyer emphasizes that the arguments put forward to extend one of these measures have a “bureaucratic and stereotyped aroma” that “cannot and should not justify interference in the fundamental rights to privacy, the secrecy of communications and privacy of those investigated.”
The defense has also challenged the dump (copy) and subsequent analysis of mobile terminals seized from defendants by order of the Cornellà court because it was done “without limitation of any kind” and not focusing on the investigation of the specific event, that is, the attack. to the bar The Hunters of Cornellà. The lawyer requires that the investigations focus on November 28, 2021, when the assault on the premises occurred, and not on access to all the information stored on the phone. In this way, in his opinion, a “universal and prospective search” that could have nullifying effects in this judicial process is avoided.