The former Secretary of State for Security with the PP, Francisco Martínez, denied this Monday in the National Court that he had given instructions to spy on Podemos leaders with the aim of finding negative information that could harm them politically. This is confirmed by sources familiar with Martínez’s statement as a defendant before Judge Santiago Pedraz, who has been investigating since last February the police maneuvers against the group now led by Ione Belarra.
The search for the background of the Podemos deputies is one of the episodes on which the judge has focused based on the messages that were seized from Martinez in the Kitchen case, recordings and apocryphal documents published in the media and testimonies incorporated into other judicial cases.
In this WhatsApp exchange, which took place in January 2016, when the talks between PSOE and Podemos for the formation of a government are in an incipient phase, it is recorded how Martínez wrote to a prominent member of the Police: “Those from Podemos who had background, were you able to confirm anything? Commissioner Enrique García Castaño replied that “nothing.” “Cagüenlaputa!” Martínez exclaimed.
However, before the judge, Martínez has denied that he asked to search for information about the leaders of the group and has also assured that no one informed him of those searches. Last spring, the former ‘number two’ of the Interior asked that the case be archived as the use of his messages, obtained in the context of the Kitchen case, in the Pedraz investigation was considered a crime, after Judge Manuel García Castellón suspended its access to them.
In parallel, Judge Pedraz has received a package of reports and letters from the different police units in which queries to restricted databases were made by his agents on members of Podemos. According to calculations by the formation’s lawyers, 10% of the units have justified these searches, which they have framed in “counter-surveillance” tasks or by court order, another 10% are what are classified as “automatic entries” and in a 80% have not justified them. Consequently, the Podemos prosecution has asked the magistrate to ask Internal Affairs to analyze whether these searches were carried out and to detail, if so, why they were carried out.
Among these reports is that of the Provincial Information Brigade of Madrid, which justifies that the searches occurred after the Podemos leaders themselves, as a result of the pre-campaign for the 2014 European Championships, requested police collaboration after those who were Some of its top leaders at the time – Pablo Iglesias and Iñigo Errejón, among others – had received threats from extreme right-wing groups. “Both for the investigation of criminal acts and for the planning of security services, consultation of computer applications of the General Directorate of the Police is necessary,” states that report.
In the interrogation this Monday, Martinez also disassociated himself from another of the episodes that Pedraz is investigating: the publication—on those same dates—of the PISA report (Pablo Iglesias Sociedad Anónima). It is a dossier, without a seal or police signature, in which unspecified accusations were made about the financing of Podemos.
According to Martínez’s conversations, this document was the work of the political brigade, as some of its members appear talking to him about obtaining data and its subsequent leak to the media. Before the judge, Martínez assured that he met him through the press. The PISA report was dismissed as an indication of any illegality by the National Court and the Supreme Court for being based, among other reasons, on press clippings.
Eight months of research
Last February, Pedraz became the first magistrate to agree to analyze by criminal means whether the police leadership of the PP governments with Mariano Rajoy illegally maneuvered to harm Podemos and its leaders in the midst of the party’s rise. Already in his order of admission for processing, the judge explained that for the moment he would not investigate the then minister, Jorge Fernández Díaz, nor the director of the Police, Ignacio Cosidó, but he would investigate several of his subordinates and senior police officers.
The complaint from Ione Belarra’s party pointed out that those investigated, following orders from Martínez and ultimately Fernández Díaz, “were in charge of carrying out prospective investigations unrelated to any police interest, not under judicial or Public Prosecutor’s control over the people.” that made up the Podemos political organization.”
The main objective, according to that complaint, was its subsequent leak to the media under the seal of reliability of the “police sources” and finally to discredit the party that Pablo Iglesias then led in the eyes of public opinion, as well as thus attacking the indemnity of its deputies and other public officials.
The consequences of this illegal police activity against the party, the complaint explained, can be found on the front pages in eight different actions: from the investigation of Iglesias in the PISA report (on the false irregular financing of Podemos) to the leak of a document ” forgery” of an account in his name at Euro Pacific Bank Limited or the manipulation of documents or internal police records to give the appearance of legality to the actions of the defendants.
Since its emergence into Spanish politics in the 2014 European elections, neither Podemos nor any of its leaders have been convicted of irregularly financing the party. A Madrid court kept proceedings open for three years in what was known as the ‘Neurona case’, which was finally archived due to lack of evidence.
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