Mouliaá avoids detention and voluntarily appears before the judge for the Errejón case

BarcelonaActress Elisa Mouliaá voluntarily appeared before the judge this Wednesday to testify in connection with the case investigating her for alleged defamation of Sumar's former spokesperson Íñigo Errejón. Last week, the magistrate ordered her arrest if she did not appear for the third summons. In this way, Mouliaá avoided being arrested by the police. In her statement, Mouliaá denied before the judge that she intended to defame Errejón and also assured that she had no intention of not cooperating with justice.

The actress had been summoned last week for the third time before Judge Arturo Zamarriego, although she decided not to appear, alleging she was working in the United Arab Emirates. She stated on social media that she would try to appear via video call if the magistrate accepted it. The judge, however, ordered her to be arrested and brought before the court because he considered that "a clear and unequivocal intention to evade justice" had been demonstrated.

Upon leaving the statement, Mouliaá explained that she had decided to appear "voluntarily" before the judge, which forced her to cancel a work contract, and lamented the "disproportionate treatment" she had suffered after presenting a medical leave and a work trip. "In the end, this lawsuit is for having made two tweets in which I accused Errejón of manipulating the testimony of two witnesses [in the case for the alleged sexual assault against the actress] because at that time I thought that was the case," she defended. "I saw a video of a witness's statement saying they had been speaking with Errejón and that he had asked them what the plan was," she added. However, she also admitted that she might have been mistaken.

Mouliaá insisted that she is the victim of a "persecution" for having denounced "a person in power" and added: "I have not ruined anyone's career, he resigned before I spoke due to previous denunciations and the only thing I have done is protect women and do the common good out of moral duty." For this reason, she insisted that she is the subject of an investigation that she considers "disproportionate": "It is a punishment to the victim for having denounced the system and a powerful person, which means the domestication, in the end, of women so that they do not report their harassers, so that we stay at home quietly, so that we are afraid and so that we do not come forward," she stated. In any case, the actress said she has apologized to the judge for not having appeared on the days she was summoned.

Errejón requests precautionary measures

After Mouliaá's statement, Errejón's defense has asked the judge to impose on the actress the obligation to appear every 15 days in court because they consider that she has shown an attitude of obstruction of justice. The objective, according to the lawyer of the former spokesperson for Sumar, is to ensure Mouliaá's presence in the proceedings for future notifications and given the risk that she may not appear again for upcoming procedural summons, reports the Efe agency. Now the judge must issue an order responding to this request.

Last week was the third time Mouliaá avoided appearing in person before the judge. The first summons was on March 27. Mouliaá announced on television her "firm intention" not to appear and that appointment ended up being suspended because Alfredo Arrién, who was her lawyer at the time, had surgery. The second attempt was on April 24. The actress asked to postpone it again and the judge rejected it, but she did not go, claiming she was on sick leave. Two days later, a forensic doctor went to her home and concluded that she was fully capable of testifying.

The appearance takes place within the case opened after a lawsuit filed by Errejón against the actress for alleged defamation for saying that he extorted witnesses in the case in which the former parliamentary spokesperson for Sumar is accused of an alleged sexual assault on Mouliaá that allegedly occurred in October 2021. The defense of the former Sumar spokesperson in Congress requested a conciliation act and compensation of 10,000 euros if Mouliaá did not retract. She rejected it and left the lawsuit, which Errejón eventually formalized.