Villarejo casts more doubts on Barcelona and Cambrils terror attacks
BarcelonaIt is well known that former superintendent José Manuel Villarejo is at daggers drawn with the former director of the Spanish Intelligence Services (CNI), Félix Sanz Roldán, whom he accuses of being responsible for his situation. That is why there are reasons to doubt all of Villarejo's accusations against Sanz Roldán, such as those he has made this Tuesday in the course of the Tándem case trial, where, without having any relation to the case on trial, he hinted that the CNI was somehow responsible somehow responsible for the terror attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils on August 17, 2017.
The ex-superintendent's exact phrase was this: "I was working with the CNI until the last day. I was working with them to solve the mess of the famous attack by the imam of Ripoll, etc., which in the end was a serious mistake by Mr. Sanz Roldán, who miscalculated the consequences of giving Catalonia a little scare". In other words, the man of the Spanish deep state, an obscure character with a lot of confidential information, accuses the Spanish secret services of having acted negligently with the imam of Ripoll with the aim of scaring the Catalan authorities. It is a very serious accusation made without evidence, it is true, but this cannot be an excuse for not clarifying once and for all the doubts and shadows that still weigh on those attacks, and more specifically on the actions of the CNI.
In fact, in the face of such serious statements, the first to act should be the Prosecutor's Office, opening an investigation of its own initiative to clarify the scope of the accusations and, if appropriate, require Villarejo to provide more details and also evidence of what he said. We also understand that Sanz Roldán himself will again file a complaint against the ex-superintendent, as he did when Villarejo accused him of harassing Corinna, former king Juan Carlos's ex-lover. Not doing so in this case would be as much as admitting the veracity of Villarejo's words.
And finally, it is necessary to set up a parliamentary inquiry where, in the first place, Félix Sanz Roldán can submit himself to the questions of MPs, but where also key participants in so-called operation Catalonia, such as former Home Secretary Jorge Fernández Díaz or former vicepresident Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, who was then in charge of the CNI. The current Spanish government ought to be the first to want to investigate this dark period of the police deep state and the dirty war against the independence movement and other forms of political dissidence.
What cannot happen is that these words go unpunished. It is incomprehensible that when an anonymous citizen tweets –in the case of Canet de Mar– they become the spokesperson for the whole independence movement and calls are made for direct rule over education matters in Catalonia, but when a former superintendent of the Spanish National Police with links to the CNI states in court that the 2017 terror attacks were possible thanks to a "grave error" of the intelligence services, there is no scandal. Villarejo is a big mouth and a manipulator, but it is the opacity of the CNI that gives him credibility.
