The National Court rules out investigating the accident of a Boeing 737 in Cuba in which 113 people died

The judge rejects the complaint filed by the sole survivor against the alleged CEO of the company

MADRID, 17 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The judge of the National Court (AN) Santiago Pedraz has ruled out investigating the plane crash in 2018 of a Boeing 737 operated by the state-owned Cubana de Aviación company registered at the José Martí International Airport in the capital, Havana, and in which they died. 113 people.

In a car last Thursday, to which Europa Press has had access, the head of the Central Court of Instruction Number 5 refuses to admit for processing the complaint filed by the only survivor of the incident and that it was directed against the alleged CEO of the Mexican company Global Air, in charge of operating the flight.

In his letter, Mailen Díaz, who was 19 years old at the time of the accident, denounces 113 crimes of homicide due to serious recklessness, as well as a crime of injury due to recklessness to the aforementioned manager -who would have Spanish nationality-- considering that he was in charge of making company decisions.

In this context, the complainant emphasizes that he put the aircraft into circulation without proper operational maintenance and without observing the most minimal safety standards, also basing his accusation on the lack of rest of the pilot of the plane itself.

The magistrate, for his part, highlights "the difficulty of four years after the event and away from the scene and without contact with the authorities, both from the place of the accident, as well as from the country where the company was based or at least with large difficulties to do so, trying to support the commission by the defendant of a crime of serious negligence".

And this is so, he maintains, while "any other imprudence, of a lesser degree, to date, would have prescribed criminally after the passage of time." But it is that, in addition, "the mere fact that, supposedly, the defendant was the general director of a company cannot, without more, be criminally attributed to him and only for this fact, a responsibility of such a degree in the accident".

"Not because it is obvious that the company cannot respond criminally and, to such a degree, to the infallibility of its pilots, but because it would be necessary to prove that, indeed, they lacked adequate competence and that the deficiencies attributed to the defendant were really the cause of the accident due to an absolute lack of diligence and foresight", he explains in his car.

But it is that, in addition, the judge considers that the attribution of Spanish nationality to the director "appears as an artificial justification to initiate a procedure without the adequate real foundation for it but possibly with an intention beyond the exercise of criminal and civil action with sufficient foundation.

Along these lines, Pedraz also highlights the fact that the complainant "carries out an interpretation of the content" of the only technical report on the accident, "so that the facts that are the subject of the complaint are, in reality, an assessment by the legal writer of the same, since it is not attributed to another person nor is it supported or proposed by any technical expert report".

"In short, and entering to assess the only existing and possible report to date on the accident, it would be more than evident that we would not find ourselves in any case before a serious imprudence of the defendant," the judge says.

Thus, the magistrate recalls that the aforementioned report comes from "an accident investigation commission." Said documents "are not expert reports whose purpose is to determine the causes of the accident and those responsible, but their purpose is the prevention of future accidents," says Pedraz, who concludes: "The report provided has an impact on certain aspects of aviation safety and their conclusions may not correspond to the responsibilities in the accident".