The Diplomat
The State Attorney’s Office has considered “impertinent” the summons as investigated of the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha González Laya, in the case opened on the alleged irregular entry into Spain of the leader of the Polisario Front, Brahim Ghali.
González Laya must appear on October 4 before Rafael Lasala, the judge of Zaragoza who is investigating the Ghali case, who summoned the former minister after her former chief of staff, Camilo Villarino, assured the magistrate that he had received a call from Gonzalez Laya on April 18 in which he was informed that “the decision had been taken to admit Brahim Ghali for humanitarian reasons in Spain”, after which he gave her “a series of indications and instructions”.
In an appeal for reform dated September 27, to which the agency Europa Press has had access, the State Attorney’s Office has requested that the order by which the imputation of the former minister is agreed be left without effect, considering it “impertinent”, since “the result of the same will not provide greater clarification on the investigated facts than that which already exists in the proceedings with the declarations and other proceedings carried out”.
“If the decision to allow Brahim Ghali to enter Spain for humanitarian reasons without passport control is in accordance with the law, it is indifferent who made the decision or who was aware of it,” added the legal services of the State, who warn in their letter that in the case there are already “reports from the National Police from which it is clear that Mr. Ghali holds Spanish nationality and is the holder of a valid DNI”, which “makes unnecessary the so questioned passport control which is the origin of the present case”.
The judge of the Court of Instruction Number 7 of Zaragoza, Rafael Lasala, has opened an investigation to determine if there was a crime of prevarication in the entry and exit of Ghali from Spain, which took place last April 18 for his admission in the Hospital of San Millán-San Pedro (Logroño) after contracting the COVID-19 and which derived in a serious diplomatic conflict between Spain and Morocco. Apart from Gonzalez Laya, next October 4, the former technical secretary general of the Ministry, Jose Maria Muriel Palomino, must testify as a witness, a summons that the State Attorney’s Office has also rejected.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, will appear today before the plenary session of the Congress, at the request of the Popular Parliamentary Group, to answer “how far the responsibilities of the Ghali case reach”.
