The Court of Instruction number 3 of Granada has summoned to testify this Tuesday the judge – already retired – who convicted Juana Rivas for child abduction, Manuel Piñar, following a complaint filed by her lawyer for alleged crimes against privacy and false testimony.
The summons has been scheduled for 9:30 a.m. on January 14, as stated in an order issued by the Court. In the complaint that gave rise to this procedure, consulted by Europa Press, the lawyer Carlos Aránguez denounces that Judge Piñar accessed private conversations that he shared in a WhatsApp group that he maintains with journalists and that he has used this information – “protected by the constitutional right to secrecy of communications” – to support a complaint against him in September 2022 giving “three different versions” about how he agreed to it.
The lawyer emphasizes that it is a “private group” that he maintains from his personal telephone with some communication professionals to share “relevant information” about the processing of their cases, among them that of Juana Rivas, and to which “only ” can be accessed “through a direct invitation” from you.
However, the judge “provided screenshots” of those conversations in his complaint, as well as “concrete and truthful information about the group” which “could not be obtained except through someone” who was part of it.
On the first occasion in which he testified as a witness-complainant, the judge supposedly stated that he received an anonymous envelope in his Court office with these screenshots and in a second judicial statement “he maintained that this information was communicated to him by a journalist whose name he refused to reveal,” according to the complaint. Juana Rivas’s lawyer emphasizes that Piñar was testifying as a witness “with the obligation to tell the truth.”
After this, in July 2023, the judge filed another complaint against Juana Rivas “alluding to those same conversations” by Aránguez and “asked for the third time” about the way in which he had access to them, he allegedly stated “that he received them.” by email.”
Juana Rivas’s lawyer has denounced her for alleged crimes of attack on privacy, understanding that she has taken over these conversations without her consent; and another of false testimony for supposedly “missing the truth” in his witness statement.
Prosecuted for alleged hate crime
Last December, the Investigative Court number 8 of Granada agreed to prosecute Manuel Piñar for the alleged commission of a hate crime for alleged comments of a type “derogatory towards groups of migrants or ethnic minorities” through the social network Facebook, some publications that he denied having made in court.
Specifically, the Court agreed in that order to continue the preliminary proceedings for the abbreviated procedure, informing the Prosecutor’s Office to “request the opening of the oral trial by formulating a document of accusation or the dismissal of the case and, exceptionally, proceedings complementary.”
The accusations were also transferred to the International Association for the Eradication of Institutional Gender Violence and the lawyer Carlos Aránguez, who already anticipated at that time that he would formulate a written accusation against Piñar.
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