The Madrid Court postponed for the third time the trial of two police translators in which Villarejo testified

One of the accused has had to change lawyers for "medical reasons"

MADRID, 30 Ene. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Provincial Court of Madrid has agreed to postpone for the third time the trial of two police translators accused of extorting money from a businessman - also under investigation - in which the retired commissioner José Manuel Villarejo was expected to testify as a witness. The court has agreed to suspend the hearing on Monday since one of the translators on trial had to change lawyers in the last week.

It is the third time that a date has been set for this trial, which, in principle, was to take place in September 2020. On that occasion, it was postponed because one of the defendants changed lawyers. The second time it was suspended 40 minutes after it started, because the defenses argued that they had not been notified during the investigation of one of the pieces of evidence that the Prosecutor's Office intended to use in the trial.

This time the trial has been postponed because the lawyer of one of the translators "has been discharged for medical reasons." From the court they have not set when the session that should have taken place this Monday could be held.

Thus, the case that focuses on the translators Ali Shan and Ijaz Ahmad will have to wait, again, to go to trial. Both defendants were hired by the General Directorate of the Police to participate in the investigation carried out by the Central Unit for Specialized and Violent Crime (UCDV) to translate telephone conversations intercepted in the framework of an investigation directed by the Investigating Court number 5 of Fuenlabrada (Madrid).

The businessman Harischandra Tarachand Varma, one of those investigated in said procedure and who had had several conversations tapped, denounced in April 2014 before Internal Affairs that the translators had extorted him. According to the letter from the Public Prosecutor's Office, they offered him information on the case in exchange for an initial payment of 10,000 euros that would increase and they threatened to "influence him against" if he did not agree.

This Monday, at the beginning of the session, the lawyer for Ijaz Ahmad -one of the accused translators- used his turn to speak to ask the court to suspend the hearing because a week ago he received the case to replace the lawyer who handled the case and has not been able to take cognizance of the procedure.

"I request the suspension without it being understood as a delay attributable to the defendant," said the lawyer without specifying the reasons for the change of lawyers. The magistrates of the Fifth Section have specified that the previous lawyer "has been discharged for medical reasons."

Thus, the rest of the defenses and the Prosecutor's Office itself have intervened to record that they did not oppose the request to suspend the hearing. The court, "so as not to violate the right of defense", has concluded that "it is impossible for the trial to take place on the dates provided".

On the sidelines, before the hearing was suspended, one of the defenses has taken the opportunity to notify the court that one of the audios that the Prosecutor's Office intends to use as evidence in the trial "cannot be heard", for which reason it has requested that the situation is rectified with a view to the new date set to resume the sessions.

The audios to which the defense has referred were the reason why the trial was suspended in September 2021. The Public Ministry had asked to interrogate the defendants with the transcripts of the tapped telephone conversations that appear in the case instead of listen to the audios during the session. The defenses, however, warned that they had not received any notification of the audios or the transcripts.

Given the warning made this Monday, the court has requested the Prosecutor's Office to provide a copy of the audios in question for the defenses.

This case comes to trial after the businessman Harischandra Tarachand Varma formalized the complaint before the Madrid courts in August 2014. According to Anticorruption, however, he did so "knowing that the facts did not conform to the truth" because " he was not a victim of any crime", since he would have ended up benefiting from the information provided by the two translators, even going so far as to demand a continuous flow of data from them.

For all these reasons, the prosecutors ask the three defendants for more than eight years in prison for the crimes of revealing secrets, extortion, more bribery for the translators and simulation of a crime for the businessman. In addition, they have requested the file of the proceedings for a fourth investigated, whom he calls to testify as a witness to relate his knowledge of the facts.

For this trial, the Public Ministry has requested the statement of six police officers, including Villarejo, inspector Andrés Gómez Gordo and the former head of Internal Affairs Marcelino Martín Blas, all of whom have been investigated in the context of the 'Tandem' macro-cause on the business of the retired commissioner.