Prestige tugs, eight years later. Les inversions
Last week marks eight years since the Prestige disaster occurred and more than one since the Audiencia Provincial de A Coruña issued the order in which they were definitely certain people who should be tried in criminal proceedings, with the inclusion of former general director of the Merchant Maria José Luis López-Sors. Over the past year we have heard noteworthy legal. Before the summer is presented indictments, including most notably that of the prosecution, which, despite the devastating argument of the hearing is not requested by the prosecution of López-Sors. The prosecutor's decision did not surprise me in view of their performance during training, not only for its intervention in the sad process of appointment of court experts, but also for having supported the incredible naval engineer's report Martín Criado, which I qualify in previous articles pseudoperito and partial, and that the very order of the Court attributed a "serious procedural traces of contamination, puts "into question its reliability" and that, of course, means that do not have "so privileged role" assigned to it by the examining magistrate, in order to exculpate Lopez-Sors.
Regarding this point, it is worth clarifying that the resolution contained in the order of the Court is now, so to speak, immovable in relation to this stage of the proceedings and that, therefore, the opinion of the prosecutor and the judge never may be validated by a hypothetical sentence declaring that the acquittal of López-Sors. In other words, after the conclusion of the trial, the sentencing court may convict or acquit the former director of Merchant Marine, but the final resolution materially based on various criteria, as to condemn need to have incriminating evidence (ie, the real test), whereas in the preliminary phase has been developed so far was sufficient incriminating circumstantial evidence, that is, it was sufficient, Supreme Court's words, "question of facts which clearly appear not exist and are attributable to a person with a minimum degree of probability circumstantial." In short, the letter of the prosecutors and the decision of the examining magistrate must be assessed according to the data known at the time of completion of the instruction, so they should be, in my opinion, severely criticized, and will remain so for ever in the history of the English criminal justice.
Moreover, in recent weeks we have learned of another momentous legal news: eight years after it was discovered that the recordings of conversations between the English authorities are incomplete and Development, in particular, are missing for the day 14 November 2002, the start of the maneuver the ship away. Is reasonable suspicion arises that someone fraudulently concealed (which is a crime), especially when they realize that the conversations are interrupted (coincidence!) Precisely when there is a call from the office of the Minister of Public Works.
This puts us in contact with another glaring deficiency of practical instruction, criticized in the order of the Court itself, that is, the lack of investigation of the possible liability of superiors López-Sors (the Secretary and the Minister of Public Works ), even though the Court had ordered to investigate this aspect. The examining magistrate is satisfied with the mere declaration of López-Sors, \u200b\u200bwhich states that, by delegation of their superiors, so he assumed sole responsibility for adopting all decisions. However, as it argues the hearing, the delegation does not relieve the delegator of responsibility, since it retains a residual power, that remains even after the delegation, and retained jurisdiction, deriving from its original duty of ensuring the source of danger, which can be used to support participation (cooperation) by default in the crime by his subordinate.
But that's not all, because the Court adds that criminal proceedings were highlighted data "that volunteer relativized hoarding" of competition by Lopez-Sors and offered evidence of an active intervention of their superiors. Hence the hidden recordings are doubly important. Carlos Martinez
Bujan.