Two Mossos d’Esquadra agents who were accused of placing drugs in a dockworker’s car at the port of Barcelona in June 2016 have been acquitted due to a lack of evidence. The agents faced a request for more than 18 years in prison, but the Barcelona court declared invalid the main evidence against them: the conversations they had thanks to the installation of a voice capture device in the police station office and in a private car. The judges believe that the authorization was foreseeable and not based on conclusive evidence. Without this evidence, combined with the sudden amnesia of two key witnesses in the trial, the court was forced to acquit the police officers of all crimes.
On June 15, 2016, Carlos L went to his gym, David Lloyd on Diagonal Avenue in Barcelona. During his training, a person whose identity has not been confirmed placed approximately a kilo of cocaine, hashish, a semi-automatic pistol, an ax, and a knife inside his car. An alleged associate who identified himself as “Alberto” called the Mossos police station in Sant Martí (Barcelona), and reported a car loaded with drugs, on the other side of Barcelona, in Les Corts.
Carlos was arrested upon leaving the gym and was allegedly the victim of placed. From the beginning, it was believed that the trap was set by David Caballero, alias Bobbitoanother historic dock worker in the port of Barcelona with whom he had a long confrontation. Bobbito He blamed Carlos for spreading the word that he and other dock workers, in addition to being involved in drug trafficking, were police informants. The nightmare ended for Carlos three years later, in 2019, when the court filed the case against him and made it clear that it had nothing to do with weapons or drugs.
The second stage was no less complicated: chasing the people who set the trap. The investigation was able to put four people in the dock: Mossos agents Francesc A. And Xavier J. (who were facing a prison sentence of 18 years and nine months for illegal detention, drug trafficking and false reporting, among other crimes) and two of their alleged associates. The investigation concluded that there were suspicions that the two police officers and the other defendants, on behalf of an unidentified person, agreed to plant the drugs and arrest him.
The ruling, seen by El Pais, considers that the various judicial mandates to wiretap the phones of the people who were investigated, and therefore, voice A car and an office, which were not supported by strong evidence. It is therefore invalid, as is the evidence obtained from these proceedings, at the request of one of the defenses, exercised by the criminal lawyer José Ramon Sorney. The court had to rely only on the statements of the defendants and witnesses in the case, and this, he says, is not enough to issue a conviction. “Once all the correct evidence was presented, the authorship of the events by none of the accused was proven,” the letter concludes.
The case was not helped by the fact that some witnesses suffered complete amnesia at the oral hearing. Contrary to what he stated during the investigation phase, one of the main witnesses stated that he did not remember anything he said. Since he denied being “under pressure” from the accused, his testimony does not constitute incrimination. The victim Carlos’s statement is also not sufficient because, beyond his suspicions, “he did not directly witness the placement of the drug and was not able to identify any of the accused.”
The ruling by the Fifth Division of the Barcelona Court also criticizes that the identity of the confidants used by the investigators only emerged at the oral trial stage. In the opinion of the judges, “the prolonged anonymity deprived the defense of the ability to exercise an adequate defense throughout the case.”