The court that is judging ex-commissioner José Villarejo in the National High Court he has refused for the second time to remove from trial one of its three magistratesFermín Echarri, to whom the former police officer recused himself again when a conversation between the two came to light when the magistrate investigated the arms dealer Abdul Rahman El Assir.
In a car, to which Efe has had access, the fourth section of Criminal Matters, with the approval of the Prosecutor’s Office, has refused to admit the incident of recusal for processing raised last week by Villarejo, who has already appealed this decision to the same Chamber for having only transferred it to the Public Ministry and not to the rest of the parties.
To reject this new incident, the court -Ángela Murillo, Carmen Paloma González and Fermín Echarri himself- argue that the cause of recusal “now invoked” is not related “in any way to the object of the lawsuit that is being prosecutedand it is nothing but a reiteration of the one already tried before” and that was rejected in January.
The difference in this one now, observe the magistrates, “is based on the content of a meeting held by the aforementioned member of the court and the accused, when he was performing his duties in the Court of Instruction No. 52 of Madrid, and that initially did not had been remembered by none of the interlocutors, which is not strange, having passed eight years since that one”.
In this new recusal incident, the former commissioner provided information from El Periódico de España, entitled “Villarejo maneuvered before the justice to exonerate the arms dealer who accompanies Juan Carlos I”, in reference to El Assir, in search and capture from March 2020 after being investigated for tax crimes by Echarri.
Regarding this magistrate, he alluded to an entry in his agenda that read “Fermín, Court 52. Very correct and receptive. He wants to return to the AN (…)”, a meeting that Echarri assured, as a result of the first challenge, that “never happened”.
However, the aforementioned newspaper had access to a recording of a conversation between the two on July 8, 2014 in which the magistrate stated that he had no room for maneuverwith which it was proven that the encounter took place.
From the content of this journalistic information, the Chamber understands that what follows is that it was “a courtesy meeting”and due to the condition of commissioner attached to the DAO with intelligence functions that Villarejo had at the time.
“It is true that, at first, the magistrate denied the meeting held, by not remembering it given the time elapsedsomething that was also indicated in the oral trial sessions by Mr. Villarejo himself, who did not remember it despite having recorded it and having made notes in his personal diaries, “recalls the Chamber.
Thus, it concludes that this magistrate could not, therefore, transfer any information in this regard to the other members of the court “when the interested party did not even have a reliable record of the aforementioned meeting, until the recording in question was made public, data that in no case constitutes any evidence of the alleged loss of impartiality of the magistrate as claimed”.
In this way they understand there was “no procedural contamination” in the magistrate for maintaining said meeting with Villarejo, “much less, as we say, for having denied the existence of it”, in addition to the fact that the former commissioner “does not specify that supposed personal interest, whether direct or indirect, that the Judge would have in the cause.”
This, they reiterate, “has nothing to do with his intervention in the case brought before the Court of Instruction No. 52 of Madrid, in which he did not appear as any procedural part, not being able to claim that his participation in any extra-procedural case and outside that , now radiate effects in the cause now prosecuted”.
Villarejo for his part does not give up and in an appeal against this decisionto which Efe has had access, regrets that the Chamber “once again” does not respect “the legally established procedure” to process a recusal incident that “in no case establishes transfer to the prosecutor” when it is going to be rejected outright.
And it is that, “what you cannot do is transfer to only one of the parties to report on an already directed rejection of said challenge & rdquor ;, criticizes the former commissioner’s defense in his letter.