The Barcelona judge investigating three Mossos d’Esquadra agents for allegedly collaborating in the escape of Carles Puigdemont last August has rejected the request of one of the police officers under investigation for the former leadership of the police to testify in the case. Ministry of the Interior of the Generalitat.
This was explained by legal sources this Wednesday after the appearance of one of the three investigated agents before the magistrate of the 24th investigating court, Maria Antònia Coscollola. The agent, defended by lawyer Cèsar Lagonigro, has availed himself of his right not to testify after having appealed the judge’s refusal to have the former head of the Mossos, Eduard Salent, appear as a witness.
The fleeting appearance and escape of Carles Puigdemont in Barcelona on August 8 led to anger from the Supreme Court and various lawsuits from ultras such as Alvise Pérez, Vox or Hazte Oír. Justice has for now ruled out charging the former ERC councilor Joan Ignasi Elena and his police leadership, as the extreme right claimed, and focuses only on three agents.
For now, only the Catalan police’s own investigation has been successful after the failure of their operation to arrest Puigdemont on the day of Salvador Illa’s investiture debate. The former president, who had promised to attend the investiture debate, limited himself to giving a brief speech under the Arc de Triomphe and then immediately getting into a car and fleeing back to Belgium.
The Mossos detained the three agents, although after being brought to justice they were released. All of them remain suspended from employment and salary, although the police officer who appeared this Wednesday had already been on leave for more than two years.
The agent was arrested for being the owner of the vehicle with which Puigdemont fled, although in reality the Mosso had exchanged the car years ago with his friend, the woman who was driving when the former president managed to escape without being arrested. In short, the defense denies any involvement in the escape.
His defense admits that the investigated person did not complete the bureaucratic procedure before traffic to formalize the change of vehicle, although he remembers that the agent offered to the Internal Affairs police who arrested him to verify that the getaway car was not his and that he, Instead, he had a van.
The intention of the defense with the request to interrogate Sallent and the police who designed the operation is to investigate the Catalan police device, although the judge has rejected it as she saw no relationship with the alleged collaboration of the three agents in the escape. of Puigdemont.
In the report they sent to the Supreme Court on the failed device to arrest Puigdemont, the Mossos admitted that the “distraction maneuver” of the former Catalan president, in a movement that “escapes all rational or political logic”, plunged them into a situation of “confusion” and “uncertainty” that prevented him from being arrested.
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