The Provincial Court of Madrid dismisses the appeal from the Prosecutor's Office, the former head of the Local Police, and the PSOE to intervene in the communications of the mayor of Alcalá de Henares and three other individuals under investigation. The court considers the measure disproportionate and closes the avenue to find out how the photograph reached Alfonso Serrano.
The Provincial Court of Madrid has rejected the intervention of communications of the mayor of Alcalá de Henares, Judith Piquet, in the case opened for the leak of a police report regarding two allegations of sexual assaults linked to migrants. The court considers that the requested measure is disproportionate concerning the investigated facts and affects the fundamental right to the secrecy of communications, according to the ruling accessed by Europa Press.
The Chamber thus dismisses the appeal from the Prosecutor's Office, which was supported by the former head of the Local Police of Alcalá de Henares (the complainant) and the PSOE, against the previous decision not to authorize new proceedings. The prosecution aimed to access the messages and calls from the phone of the then head of the Local Police, the mayor, the Security councillor, and the Communication director of the City Council throughout January 2024.
The origin of the case lies in the dissemination on the social network X of a screenshot of a police report corresponding to an incident on December 11, 2023, related to a call to 092 regarding injuries to a woman. According to the court's account, the events date back to January 2024 and are being investigated as a possible crime of revelation of secrets under Article 417.1 of the Penal Code.
The ruling describes the chain of transmission that supports the accusation: "supposedly on January 17, 2024, the complainant himself, then Chief of Local Police, would be the one who reveals the secret or information and at the same time reports the leak of the incident supposedly to the mayor, who would take a photo of it, and either she or the Communication director shows it to the secretary, who would also take a photo of the report, which was later published on social network X."
The Court emphasises that the investigation must focus on the specific facts and cannot indiscriminately extend to all calls and communications of the involved parties' phones. It recalls that accessing the content of mobiles, messages, calls, photographs, and digital files constitutes a "serious restriction" of the right to the secrecy of communications and privacy, thus requiring motivated judicial authorisation and respect for the principles of proportionality, specificity, and judicial control.
Sources from Judith Piquet's defence state that, with this avenue closed, "there is still no objective evidence that proves how the photograph reached Alfonso Serrano nor that individualises the actions of each investigated party." They add that the Court has prevented the Prosecutor's Office and the accusations from undertaking "a prospective investigation to try to find, afterwards, evidence that has not appeared during the instruction."
How the photograph reached Alfonso Serrano no longer has any procedural avenue within these proceedings through which it can be accredited. It is not a mere assessment from the defence: it was the Prosecutor's Office and the accusations that requested these measures because they deemed them necessary and have definitively lost the appeal
The defence argues that the only thing remaining against the investigated parties is the version of the former head of the Local Police, without technical, documentary, or expert evidence corroborating the chain of transmission from Piquet to Raúl Castillo and from him to Alfonso Serrano. "The only accredited evidence is that the document was not delivered to Mr. Serrano by the mayor, as evidenced in the statements of both," the same sources indicate.
With the dismissal of the appeal, the avenue to intervene in the communications is definitively closed, and the case continues without those proceedings having been carried out.
You may also like
