MADRID, 21 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Eighteen prosecutors from the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court (TS) have addressed a letter to the State Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, in which they criticize him for “deliberately ignoring” the request for “institutional protection” from the prosecutors of the ‘ processes’ in front of the parliamentary investigation commissions agreed upon by PSOE and Junts to detect alleged cases of ‘lawfare’.
In the letter, collected by Europa Press, the signatories have expressed their “disappointment at the lack of will” of the attorney general to “come out against the slanderous insinuations” about the actions of the prosecutors of the ‘procés’ that “have been reflected in the investiture agreement signed by PSOE and Junts” regarding the so-called “lawfare” – also known as ‘judicial war’ – against the Catalan independence movement.
Tax sources tell this news agency that the letter has been signed by 18 of the 26 prosecutors of the Criminal Chamber of the TS and that the four prosecutors of the ‘procés’ have not signed their signature.
Consuelo Madrigal, Javier Zaragoza, Fidel Cadena and Jaime Moreno had demanded that García Ortiz, “in his capacity as attorney general of the State and president of the Fiscal Council, after hearing this body,” grant them “institutional protection” because “along with “the granting of the amnesty, an exceptional mechanism of grace that is not contemplated in the Constitution, have agreed to the creation of investigative commissions in parliament with the purpose of evaluating the actions that have been carried out or carried out by the judicial bodies and the Public Ministry” .
According to the four prosecutors of the ‘procés’, the content of this agreement generates “special concern” for them, since – in their opinion – “it violates the principle of separation of powers and undermines judicial independence at its roots.”
In this sense, the four stressed that the review of jurisdictional decisions by another branch of the State, in this case the Legislature, was not “admissible in a State that proclaims itself democratic and governed by the rule of law.” And they warned that initiatives like this clearly demonstrated “the attempt to establish political control over the Judiciary.”
The State Attorney General responded in a letter that “any position of the Public Ministry regarding a future amnesty” required “knowing the definitive norm that regulates it once it becomes part of our system.” Thus, he pointed out that said positioning, “in any technical-legal case”, would be carried out “through statutory channels” and in cases in which the intervention of the Prosecutor’s Office is demanded.
García Ortiz insisted that he had to “maintain an impartial public position” but assured that he would “always” ensure “the autonomy of those who have exercised and continue to exercise as prosecutors in defense of legality, constitutional values ??and principles and, ultimately, democratic institutions.
Now, 18 prosecutors from the Criminal Court have criticized the attorney general for the content of his letter. “It has been nothing more than a way of deliberately ignoring the response to the very serious situation that the Public Prosecutor’s Office is experiencing and to the request for protection formulated by the prosecutors of the ‘proces’, for themselves and for the prosecutors of Catalonia, in the face of the unjustified attacks to which they are being subjected,” they have assured.
