The Operation Kitchen trial will bring together a cast of exceptional witnesses. The Fourth Section of the National Court, which will be the one that will prosecute the alleged espionage of the former PP treasurer Luis Bárcenas on behalf of the Ministry of the Interior commanded by Jorge Fernández Díaz, has admitted the list of witnesses proposed by the PSOE as a popular accusation, that is, the former president of the government, Mariano Rajoy and a good part of his leaders, will be heard in the courtroom.
In a resolution that ABC had access to, the magistrates approved the testimony of the 50 witnesses they proposed, among whom are also the former secretary general of the popular party, María Dolores de Cospedal, the former Minister of the Interior Juan Ignacio Zoido and the former director general of the National Police, Ignacio Cosidó, who was not charged with these events, which occurred while he was in office.
He also requested the summons as witnesses of the former Minister of Justice of Madrid Enrique López and the Secretaries of State José Antonio Nieto and Ignacio Ulloa, among others, who are added to that of the former vice-president of the government Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, whose testimony was requested by Podemos, according to the indictment cited by Ep, and which was also accepted.
The Chamber only dismissed the allegations of both prosecutions regarding witnesses concerning a series of journalists who also wanted to listen during the trial and who were dismissed because “they are information professionals who did not participate in the events being prosecuted, but rather communicated the extreme information” they deemed appropriate.
With a similar reasoning, the request of the defense of the former Secretary of State Francisco Martínez to call to testify the first anti-corruption prosecutor who had the Villarejo case, Ignacio Stampa, and the Minister of the Interior Fernando Grande-Marlaska. He considers that these are “useless and unnecessary statements for the purposes of this procedure.”
Operation Kitchen is the popular name of the separate piece number 7 of the case that investigates the activities of retired commissioner José Manuel Villarejo and so far, the one that has had the most political impact, since it puts the Interior leadership of Rajoy on trial for alleged spying on the PP treasurer at the time, Luis Bárcenas, in theory to boycott the development of the Gürtel case.
In addition to the controversial police officer, the aforementioned former Secretary of State, former Interior Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz, former Deputy Operational Director of the National Police, Eugenio Pino, sit on the bench; former Interior Minister Marcelino Martín Blas, Commissioners Andrés Gómez Gordo and José Luis Olivera, and Police Prefects José Ángel Fuentes Gago and Bonifacio Díez Sevillano, as well as Luis Bárcenas’ family driver, Sergio Ríos Esgueva. The requests for sentences exceed 15 years in prison.
