“It is clear to everyone that the lack of warnings about the risk the population assumed when going down to the garages proved fatal.” This is how the judge of Catarroja (Valencia) Nuria Ruiz Tobarra, in charge of the investigation into the management of the dana, has expressed herself in a ruling responding to the document submitted by the lawyer of the former president of the Generalitat Carlos Mazón.
The former leader of the Valencian Popular Party asked the judge to specify whether there was any open line of investigation or pending issue regarding any possible criminal responsibility on his part and, if not, to state this explicitly. Mazón argued that there is no evidence in the case that he gave instructions for sending ES-Alert nor an order to stop the alerts and analyzed 42 of the deaths to argue that there is no proven “individualized causal link” between any positive action of his and any of those deaths, some occurring after 20:11, when the warning was issued to the population, according to his argument.
Now, the judge responds that “the lack of warnings about the risk the population assumed when going down to the garages proved fatal.” She maintains that “the ignorance of the very serious risk the victims were assuming, the lack of adequate and timely warnings is evident and common precisely in all the cases mentioned in the former president’s document.”
The investigator considers that Mazón “confuses the in extremis actions of the victims or those trying to save their lives with safeguarding and self-protection measures,” which “never arrived on time” and, moreover, “were issued with manifestly erroneous and incomplete content, at least in the 20:11 message.”
Furthermore, she says she does not understand “why only the Es Alert of 20:11 is considered” and “all reference” to the 20:57 alert is omitted, which was sent to populations in four regions: Horta Sud, Hoya de Buñol, Ribera Alta, and Ribera Baja, and which “was more accurate in its content, as it included the recommendation to stay indoors (confinement) and, specifically, for areas and homes near rivers and ravines, included the measure to stay away from them (evacuation) and go to higher floors (distancing).” However, she emphasizes that it was “extremely late and was not sent to the entire province.”
Mazón, according to the judge’s ruling, argued that some of the victims, following the 20:11 message to avoid travel throughout the province of Valencia, “would have likewise perished in their homes” and cited, as exculpatory elements, either the fact that a victim entered the garage facing a dangerous situation and sought protection from the current; or that the decision to enter the garage was made before a hypothetical alert sent around 20:00; or that some victims had already taken some self-protection measures.
“No one forces you to be a party”
The judge points out that it is not her competence to analyze the hypotheses that he may formulate regarding the case, which she emphasizes “he can withdraw from” if he considers it. “If the privileged person believes there is nothing that can be imputed to him, logically he can withdraw from the procedure; no one forces him to be part of these preliminary proceedings,” she states, insisting on his privileged status (as he remains a regional deputy) and that he has declined to testify before the investigating court.
For Ruiz Tobarra, Mazón’s document is “an extensive request for dismissal” addressed to a body ―of which she is the head— “that is not competent” to make this decision ―because Mazón is privileged― and also made “by a person who does not hold the status of investigated.” In this regard, she states that one must adhere to what has already been resolved by the Superior Court of Justice (TSJ) of the Valencian Community and by the Provincial Court.
Thus, she rejects maintaining a “prospective personal investigation,” which she calls “an empty assertion, without support or mention of any proceeding of such nature,” and maintains that it “confuses” the proceedings that may affect a privileged person with an investigation about him. “What his representation cannot intend is to validate the right to appear through the issuance of a resolution not contemplated in our procedural system,” she reasons about what she considers a request for dismissal, and emphasizes that, as the Valencian TSJ already stated, the judge “can and must” continue investigating.
Furthermore, she holds that the defense’s request contradicts Mazón’s own actions, since “he requested at the time to be allowed to appear, which would only be useful to propose evidence or participate in those agreed upon, or even to directly express his version of what happened in the procedure and not through a document from his representation.” In any case, she stresses that the defense could access the proceedings on June 15 but did not do so until a month and a half later: July 31.
In this line, she emphasizes that the request is based on a “reiteration” of what the Valencian superior court already resolved —which rejected investigating the former president— and in it performs an analysis of the messages exchanged between his former chief of staff, José Manuel Cuenca, and Salomé Pradas, the former councilor under investigation, whose probative effectiveness was already resolved by the high court. Therefore, she considers it “pointless and inappropriate” to revisit this point, while stressing that it is unknown whether those messages are all the ones in the possession of Pradas or Cuenca because they were deleted or because Mazón himself voluntarily provided them. According to those messages and Mazón’s argument, he would be excluded from responsibility in 42 deaths analyzed in the document.
No testimony
Regarding this, the judge points out that no one forces him to establish that causal relationship and that, if he wants to analyze it, “it only concerns him.” In this line, she emphasizes that those hypotheses expressed by the ‘former president’ “are not supported by the declaration of the interested party himself,” highlighting that “he has neither testified nor requested to testify.”
On the other hand, she considers that his “exculpatory thesis” becomes “inculpatory” for Pradas because “it is stated that it made no difference to send that message (to avoid travel) or not to send any, that the deaths would have occurred in most cases.” She adds that maintaining the claim that it was consensual “implies ignoring not only the structure, competencies, and functioning of Cecopi, but also the sequence of message preparation” and the “direct intervention and authorization” of Pradas. “It is not only that no Es-Alert message was sent until 20:11, delayed with absurd legal quibbles about confinement, not to mention linguistic ones, but that previously, incomprehensibly, no other means of warning the population were used, who were completely unaware of the risks, especially in areas where it was not raining,” she states.
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