The Supreme Court refuses to impute Pablo Iglesias for the 'Dina case'

The Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court has decided to archive the case against the second vice president of the Government, Pablo Iglesias, for revealing secrets and other crimes attributed to him by the judge in the Villarejo case, Manuel García-Castellón, who had presented a reasoned statement before the High Court for the capacity of the leader of Podemos.

The Supreme Court judges have decided to return the case to the National Court because it is absolutely necessary to listen to Dina Bousselham, the victim of the alleged crime, before accusing Iglesias, a diligence that García-Castellón repeatedly refused to carry out before raising the exhibition reasoned and despite the fact that Pablo Iglesias' former advisor had sent him a letter exonerating the second vice president. The magistrates of the Supreme Court leave the door open that, once the instruction is really exhausted, the judge has gathered solid evidence to impute Iglesias, not as has happened on this occasion.

Manuel García-Castellón accused Pablo Iglesias of the crime of discovering and revealing secrets; another of computer damage; and another of accusation and false complaint, in relation to the theft of the cell phone of a Podemos party advisor, Dina Bousselham, in November 2015. Information contained in that cell phone was later published by various media outlets. A copy of it was found in the registry of the home of Commissioner Villarejo.

The Chamber reminds García-Castellón that the Penal Code requires the complaint of the aggrieved person for the crime of discovery and disclosure of secrets in order to act against the alleged perpetrator, the opposite of what has happened in the last development of his investigation. In an order drawn up by magistrate Andrés Palomo, the Supreme Court resolves that "compliance with such requirement has in no way been determined with the precision or clarity required, to make its declining jurisdiction effective."

Bousselham declared in March 2019 before García-Castellón that he could not access the content of the card when Iglesias returned it to him. Those responsible for the missing magazine Interviú had handed it over to him in January 2016 and the leader of Podemos kept it in his possession for at least six months. According to him, with the aim of protecting Bousselham from the pressure he was suffering from the false news of a relationship between the two. Part of the material contained in the card began to be published by Okdiario and other media in the summer of that year, at which point Iglesias decided that he could no longer isolate his former collaborator from the dissemination of that content and decided to return it to him, always according to his version.

Despite knowing this to the judge, everything changed when he returned from confinement. At the request of the Prosecutor's Office, García-Castellón summoned Bousselham to explain that he could not consult the card and, after having considered the case an attack by the political brigade on Podemos, the magistrate focused his efforts within the framework of the macrocause Villarejo in obtaining indications for the imputation of Iglesias, although he did not obtain positive results. Despite the opposition of Anticorrupción and the decision of the Criminal Chamber to return Iglesias lon condition of being injured, García-Castellón went ahead and took his decision against the vice president to the Supreme Court.

Regarding the crime of computer damage, in relation to those suffered on the stolen mobile card, the Chamber also considers it necessary that Dina Bousselham be heard by Judge García-Castellón in relation to whether the content of the card was accessible when it was Pablo Iglesias delivered, since also on this point the former collaborator of the politician has changed version. In the letter to the aforementioned judge, his defense also assured that he could consult the content of the card once it was returned by Iglesias.

García-Castellón activated international legal cooperation to find out from a Welsh company - which the then Bousselham couple had resorted to to try to recover its content - if the card had been physically damaged, something that it already ruled out, as well as the police experts. Even so, the Supreme Court considers that an expansion of the computer science expert carried out on the damage to the card is necessary to specify the causes that prevent access to the information on the card, which was the system or the technique used to proceed with the erasure, elimination, deterioration , uselessness or inaccessibility of the files that the card contained, and if possible proceed to the recovery of all this data and date of the last access.

García-Castellón "abandoned various lines of research"

Finally, with regard to the crime of accusation and false complaint, the order recalls that the investigating judge assumes that Dina Bousselham lied when she was aware that the screenshots published by Okdiario were those that she had sent to other people and that Iglesias I knew. Anti-corruption has already reminded García-Castellón that The main hypothesis of how the content of the card arrived at Okdiario, El Confidencial and El Mundo is that Commissioner Villarejo gave it to him, who had obtained a copy from those responsible for Interviú. However, the judge focused on Iglesias and separated the "Villarejo lines" for the dissemination of private information.

Now, the Supreme Court accuses the judge of "abandoning various lines of investigation, to advocate as a reality that has occurred a concrete alternative without greater plausibility, without specific investigation of the dates of the source files (and without attending to the coincidences of July 2016 and creation), existing on various devices where images from Ms. Bousselham's mobile have been found; and when the mismatch in the application of the hash function does not imply that the origin is diverse, since any minimal change is sufficient later in the file to give a different figure ”.

In another rapture to the magistrate, the Supreme Court reminds him that he cannot act against Iglesias for a false complaint until there is a final sentence or a final order, of dismissal or file, on the crime falsely reported, which has not occurred in this case . The high court believes that after exhausting the investigation in the indicated sense, it is when the judge will be able, "only in the hypothesis that the result advises it and the required procedural requirements have been met, prepare a new reasoned statement."

The rationale referred to a second measurer, United We Can Deputy Gloria Elizo, but only for the crime of accusation and false report. The Supreme Court also files the case in the absence of consistent evidence and the absence of the aforementioned procedural requirement. On the other hand, the order declares the lack of competence with respect to the non-gauged persons mentioned in the rationale, Marta Flor, Raul Carballedo and Ricardo de Sa Ferreira.