The Diplomat
The political controversy generated by the alleged irregular entry into Spain of the leader of the Polisario Front, Brahim Ghali, reached yesterday the Congress, in which the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, evaded on two occasions the questions of the leader of the PP, Pablo Casado, on this matter.
During his intervention in the Plenary of the Congress, Casado asked up to twice if Pedro Sánchez was “the X of the Ghali case” and had “ordered” to let “an individual wanted for genocide, terrorism and rape”.
After the response of the head of the Executive, in which he assured that his Government makes “useful policy” and said that the Spaniards are “fed up with the brawl, insults and shouts”, the leader of the opposition recalled that the control session to the Government “is to respond to what is asked” and warned him that “if he uses his position to evade a judicial investigation, he commits a crime of concealment, and if he issues a resolution knowing that it is unjust, he commits a crime of prevarication”. “No matter how much he pays” the former Foreign Minister Arancha González Laya “with a European position” and the former vice-president Carmen Calvo with the presidency of a parliamentary commission, “the responsibility is of the president of the Government”, he added.
In the same session of Congress, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, also had to face a question about the ‘Ghali case. Specifically, the MP Valentina Martinez Ferro, of the PP, also accused Pedro Sánchez of being ultimately responsible for the authorization of the “illegal entry” of Ghali and asked, therefore, for the creation of a commission of inquiry to settle political responsibilities.
“It was Moncloa who decided that everything was hidden, that everything was denied and finally that Laya was dismissed,” said the PP MP, who added that the details of the case have been “more typical of The Godfather than of a president of the Government.” “Moncloa decided that everything should be hidden, that everything should be denied” and this case has already splashed the “Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Defense, Interior, the Vice Presidency, the Minister of Education and the socialist president of La Rioja”, she added.
In his response, Albares asked the PP to “be careful” so that the same thing that happened “with the Delcygate“ (in reference to the entry into Spain of the Venezuelan Vice President, Delcy Rodríguez, in January 2020), about which the PP “were weeks bringing all kinds of accusations” that finally “were archived without trial because no one appreciated any evidence of crime”.
Likewise, Albares assured that he has “full confidence that the Government complies with the law” and that “in this case it has also done so”, so he asked the PP to “respect the work of diplomatic, police, military and health officials and not to come here to seek political gain”.
On the other hand, the Criminal Chamber of the National Court overturned the decision of Judge Santiago Pedraz to file the complaint filed by the Sahrawi Association for the Defense of Human Rights (ASADEDH) against Brahim Ghali for alleged crimes of genocide, due to a procedural error, considering that the matter should have been processed as ordinary proceedings, not as abbreviated proceedings. According to the judges, the crimes of which the Polisario Front leader is accused “are punishable by penalties that exceed the objective limit of the abbreviated procedure”.
