Public prosecutors in Catalonia have this Monday announced they they will investigate the claims that the so-called 'patriotic police' under Mariano Rajoy's PP government of Spain, launched attacks against the senior prosecutor of Catalonia, Martín Rodríguez Sol, as part of their campaign against the Catalan independence movement. Among the new documentation published in recent days in relation to Operation Catalonia is a document, with the letterhead of both the Spanish interior ministry and the Spanish National Police leadership's internal affairs unit, which proposed an investigation of possible "links between the senior prosecutor of Catalonia, Martín Rodríguez Sol, and the [conservative Catalanist party] Unió Democràtica de Catalunya and the commissions managed by the aforementioned party's lawyers". The prosecutor's office in Catalonia now intends to confirm the veracity of this document and check the extent of the action it gave rise to.
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"Investigation Proposal on Information Received·": Bullet point number seven on the document proposes investigation of links between senior prosecutor Martín Rodríguez Sol and the Unió party, as well as the "commissions managed by the aforementioned party's lawyers".
The prosecutor Rodríguez Sol was removed from his position in 2013 after taking a position in favour of the possibility of Catalans deciding on their political future. The prosecutor also opened an investigation into the publication of false information against the-then Catalan president Artur Mas and former leader Jordi Pujol, which ultimately failed to go ahead.
The document on the investigation to which Rodríguez Sol was subjected was published in ElNacional.cat as well as in La Vanguardia and Eldiario.es last week. And it is these two latter media that the Prosecutor's Office's request focuses on. The note announcing the opening of the investigation emphasizes that the investigation into Rodríguez Sol "was never brought to the attention of any judicial body or the prosecution service, although the officers in charge should have done so".
The public prosecutors have requested the documentation that was published and have instructed the general commissioner of the judicial police to investigate the case to "determine the veracity of the document", as well as the date on which it was circulated and the identification of the officials responsible for its drafting. Should the existence of this document be confirmed, "detailed information will be needed about the police actions resulting from it, in relation to the person of the then-senior prosecutor of Catalonia, the police authority who directed the investigations and the identity of the officials or authorities to whom the results of any investigation which may have been carried out were communicated."
The text announcing the opening of the probe into the scope of the investigation into prosecutor Rodríguez Sol emphasizes that "the agents involved do not appear to have advised the prosecution service of the start of the suggested actions, or the course that they could follow, all with the undisguised aim of discrediting the then-highest prosecution service authority in the territory of this autonomous community and creating difficulties for him in the exercise of the mission that Article 124 of the Spanish Constitution confers on all prosecutors".
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