The 'Kitchen' judge suspends access to Francisco Martínez's chats to safeguard national security

MADRID, 6 Mar. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The judge of the National Court Manuel García Castellón, who instructs 'Kitchen', has agreed to temporarily suspend the access of the parties in person to the 23 WhatsApp chats of the dump of the mobile of the former Secretary of State for Security Francisco Martínez to safeguard the general interest and national security since "they could be compromised by full access to such items."

The magistrate, in an order dated Friday, March 3, to which Europa Press has had access, makes this decision, also noting that this also safeguards the private interests of Martínez since they include conversations on matters that are not investigated in the case. 'Kitchen', in which the alleged vigilante operation orchestrated to spy on former PP treasurer Luis Bárcenas and his entourage has been investigated.

It was that same Friday when Martínez's defense submitted a letter to the National Court focusing on the dumping of his phone on the digital platform, which he refused but which the judge admitted after requesting it by the former deputy director of operations (DAO). Eugenio Pino, had encouraged various media to publish information that had nothing to do with the cause, and that affected his privacy and even state secrets.

The magistrate now says that even prior to asking the Public Prosecutor, he proceeds to "guarantee fundamental rights and public interests in the presence" to suspend access to these chats "even temporarily."

"The applicant lists 23 private chats from the WhatsApp messaging application, derived from dumping his mobile terminal, to which all parties would have been given access, through the cloud platform, and which would have been fully incorporated and without any expurgation. , which would be causing serious damage to third parties not involved or investigated in this case," he says.

The former Secretary of State for Security denounced that since he agreed to incorporate the full dump of his WhatsApp conversations into the virtual platform of the case, his messages are being published in numerous media," and that in these conversations "information appears regarding issues that are directly related to public security to which he had access at the time he held the position of Secretary of State for Security". He pointed out that it is "classified" information under the Official Secrets Law, with the category of secret.

For this reason, Martínez requested the protection of the judge to order "the immediate elimination" of the platform of all the files "because their delivery to the parties is absolutely disproportionate, illegitimate from the point of view of the purposes of the treatment and seriously harmful to fundamental rights".

He also pointed out that it was unnecessary to upload those chats that he had with journalists, police commanders, members of the PP and even with the former president of the Government Mariano Rajoy, given that the conversations that were relevant to the cause were already extracted by Internal Affairs and incorporated into a report. .

"The 23 files that are incorporated into the Cloud Platform by decision of the Court are therefore not related to the facts investigated in the case and contain the entire conversations in the WhatsApp messaging application maintained by Francisco Martínez", laments the defense.

In fact, he pointed out that in the publications that have already appeared in the media "some source of information from other countries has been revealed, a regular collaborator of the Spanish information services."

It also indicated that his conversations with the priest Silverio Nieto have been leaked, and he explains that in them "he alludes to issues related to the religious confession of Francisco Martínez, with his religious beliefs and practices."

In the same way, he explained that intimate conversations with his father and his wife have been uploaded to that platform. "Hundreds of pages and thousands of conversations of personal, intimate and reserved content, with the wife of Francisco Martínez, typical of a marriage, with explicit references to situations and decisions related to minor children, health information of family members , details of the treatments and medications prescribed to both the spouses and their children, etc.

And it added that this situation "causes personal harm that is difficult to describe, both to the person investigated and to numerous people around him and also to general interests, due to the public dissemination of matters that should be protected as classified information, or as personal data especially sensitive".

Thus, Francisco Martínez warned that "the unlimited violation of the privacy of a person, of his family and, specifically, of four minors, for reasons unrelated to criminal investigation and, therefore, absolutely unnecessary from the point of view of jurisdictional functions", is something sought by the applicants for the incorporation of the content of the telephone to the platform, that is, Pino himself.

It also disfigured the head of the Central Court of Instruction number 6, Manuel García Castellón, who had "consented and encouraged" by having authorized without any control or limitation the incorporation into the platform and, consequently, the dissemination in numerous social media.