The trial of the Police translators in which Villarejo will testify will begin this Monday

It is the third time that a date has been set for this trial in which the Prosecutor's Office asks the defendants for up to eight years in prison

MADRID, 29 Ene. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Provincial Court of Madrid will hold this Monday, starting at 10:00 a.m., the first session of the trial of two police translators accused of extorting money from a businessman --also under investigation-- in which the commissioner is expected to testify as a witness retired Jose Manuel Villarejo.

It is the third time that a date has been set for the 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.

It will be this Monday, January 30, 2023, when the defenses and the Public Ministry sit down again before the Fifth Section of the Provincial Court of Madrid. The calendar is scheduled to run until February 3.

This case focuses on Ali Shan and Ijaz Ahmad, who were hired by the General Directorate of Police to participate in the investigation carried out by the Central Unit for Specialized and Violent Crime (UCDV) to translate intercepted telephone conversations in the framework of an investigation directed by the Court of Instruction 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.

The case comes to trial after 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 Prosecutor's Office 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 business of the retired commissioner.