Interior defies Justice and returns to decorate the commissioner pardoned for torture
The Ministry of the Interior defies Justice by granting the pensioned medal to a dozen retired former commissioners who had had such recognition annulled in 2021, considering a lack of motivation in the files and deficiencies in the allegation process, which is why that several police unions challenged the previous call.
Despite this judicial resolution, the National Police, which depends on the Ministry of the Interior, has once again included in the order of police merit to receive the silver medal the commissioners Eloy Quirós, Francisco Javier Migueláñez, Francisco López Canedo, Héctor Moreno, Francisco Rodríguez, José María Moreno Moreno and Manuel Páez. That medal -the maximum professional reward they can receive-, entails a lifetime increase in the pension equivalent to 15% of the base salary.
As this newspaper already reported, in the case of Héctor Moreno, he was sentenced in the past for torture and illegal detention. The events occurred in 1982 in the Madrid neighborhood of Malasaña, when several agents detained passers-by "without any cause" and then beat and threatened them. The agents also falsified the police report.
In a ruling dated May 10, the Central Administrative Court number 11 of the National High Court annulled the procedure by which these commissioners were included to receive the silver medal.
It must be remembered that all of them ceased their professional career in the National Police for having turned 65 years of age and that now they have been chosen to receive this end-of-career award without meeting the necessary requirements for recognition of this type. .
Union reaction
The court attended to the demands presented by the CEP, JUPOL and UFP police unions and annulled "because they were not in accordance with the law" the prizes that included life pensions published in the Orders of the Ministry of the Interior, derived in turn in the General Order Extraordinary of the National Police dated September 16, 2021.
Police unions have now reiterated their criticism. The CEP has defended the importance of “ending medal awarding practices that are not objective, transparent and fair”. After the ruling of the National High Court, he stressed that the judge highlighted the relevance of the trade union organizations in the procedure prior to the granting of these prizes, which, in any case, should not "offend thousands of colleagues who risk their lives on a daily basis and They don't go home with extra pay."
The CEP assures that these medals "tarnish hundreds of meritorious and risky interventions carried out by active national police officers who risk their lives on the streets of all of Spain." Once again, adds the union, "they have not been recognized by the Interior, which maintains as a reference regulation in this area a law from fifty-eight years ago, approved during the dictatorship and never updated by successive governments to democratize it and impose on it principles such as transparency and objectivity”.
The National Court censured in the previous call the lack of clarity of the procedure to reward, among others, Francisco Javier Migueláñez, who led from Internal Affairs the investigations against the also commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, Francisco Rodríguez López, Héctor Moreno and José María Moreno Dark. Months ago the same thing happened due to the lack of an "individualized proposal" with other managers: Eloy Quirós, Manuel Páez and Francisco López Canedo.
The judge understood that the merit requirements to receive the silver medals had not been met, as set out in article 5 of the 1964 Law that regulates the reasons for awarding the gold or silver cross in cases such as death or serious injuries, as well as services of transcendental importance or that imply merits of an extraordinary nature.
