The current Organization Secretary of the Andalusian PSOE, Noel López, ends the electoral campaign with a shadow of suspicion of having participated, as an inducer, in the illegal detention of a councilor from the Maracena (Granada) City Council, of which he had been mayor. The kidnapping occurred a few months ago and the line of investigation followed by the judge, prosecutor and Civil Guard place both López and his successor and cousin, the current mayoress Berta Linares, his partner – the only one investigated and in prison- and the town planning councillor. Visceral hatred, envy, irregular files, power struggles and suspicions of corruption is what emerges from the cause. Now the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia must decide if the indications that exist regarding all of them are credible and sufficient to initiate a formal investigation against the socialist leaders.
Both the Investigating Court number 5 of Granada and the Prosecutor's Office believe that there are sufficient indications but they have not been able to take the next step with respect to López and Linares because the first one was registered. The statement of the victim, that of the main suspect -to whom they give credibility- and the analysis of the phone calls and positions at the time of the events make their indicative credibility be assessed.
According to the main suspect, everything was planned at a meal a month earlier, in January of this year, in which both he and his partner, the current mayor, López, and the Urban Planning councilor, Antonio García Leyva, Nono, were present. Vanessa's name came up in the conversation and Linares recalled that "he doesn't even want to see her, that he wished her dead," according to the testimony of the main suspect, Pedro Gómez, as extracted in the judicial order by which the Court has referred the matter to the TSJA and to which La Vanguardia has had access.
After learning of this resolution, López issued a statement "categorically" denying the accusations, in his opinion made by an "unbalanced" person. In fact, Gómez is diagnosed with bipolar, he is controlled with medical treatment, his partner knew it and López himself too, according to his own testimony.
As stated in his judicial statement, in that meeting in a tavern in the same town, there was talk of giving Romero a "fright" or "a lesson". Even Nono would have proposed hiring two Ukrainians, according to Gómez. Always according to the testimony of the person investigated, Noel López was the one who came up with the idea that Pedro should be the one to scare him and take his mobile phone to destroy it. According to the testimony, López insisted on this plan because because of his illness, nothing was going to happen to Gómez and that in the event that Vanesa denounced him "they would put a lawyer on him and he would simply be scared."
At that meeting -according to Gómez's testimony-, López explained that he had even mediated so that they offered the councilor a position in administration at a water company to "earn more money" and thus leave the City Council. But apparently, she refused. "Why doesn't she die and this woman leave me alone?" Linares would have said at the time.
Berta Linares also agreed with the plan, according to the investigator. So February 21 is the day it was decided to execute such a plan. Like every day, Vanessa went to school to drop off her two children. There she met Pedro who told her that he had gone to drop off Berta's children but she had run out of gas and asked him to take him home.
But on the way, already in the car, the co-pilot took out a gun and pointed it at her. He ordered her to go through a pine forest until she reached the Cubillas reservoir. Once parked, Gómez tied the councilor with ties at the wrists, others at the ankles and another tie to join the feet with the hands.
After a few minutes, the victim convinced him to release the ties because they were too tight. Gómez wanted the councilor to send a WhatsApp message to the municipal architect, he wanted her to go where she was. "Come to this location to talk." But this location did not arrive.
Despite the pleas and offering to deliver her minutes to the City Council and not say anything about what happened, he did not believe her and for that reason he gagged her, covered her mouth and eyes and took her to a garage in Granada. He pulled her out of her car, they wrestled with her and finally put her in the trunk before driving away from her.
Vanessa Romero was locked in and managed to get out of the car with kicks. In total, the events lasted two hours, she ran out and asked for help. For these facts, Gómez was arrested and sent to prison. He decided to collaborate with justice and acknowledge that Berya and Vanessa "couldn't even see each other." Linares thought your partner was going to try for mayor when López left office.
Not knowing that Vanessa had managed to escape, Gómez went to a hardware store to buy a knife and duct tape but – always according to his version – his partner, Berta, called him to tell him and that the Police were looking for him. But he went to cut his hair, then to the train station, had a beer and took a train to Maracena, where he was finally arrested. In that period of time from when they found out that the victim had fled until Gómez was arrested, the expert reports show that there was a crossover of calls between all of them. The town planning councilor would have had several conversations with López -according to the investigators- and they met a few hours later, as evidenced by their location with the location of the telephone antennas.
"This story, both the one maintained by the complainant, and in a large part of what was answered by the person under investigation, enjoys very solid indicative support, not only because of the security and number of details offered by both that are essentially the same, because the story is based on a large number of objective elements that endorse its veracity.
“These tests would be the verification of the recordings of the security cameras, the recovery of the effects that the investigated carried in the backpack (knife, flanges, pistol, gloves, etc.), the verification of the acquisition of the pistol and the machete through the Amazon platform, the testimonies of the municipal architect and the manager of the hardware store who attended him, the screenshots of the WhatsApp messages, the visual report of the garage, the examination of the investigated cell phones and the vehicle, etc. ”, collects the court decision.
The suspicion offered by the victim is that she kept documents proving irregularities in the files and that it affected both López and Linares, documents that she had kept in the trunk on the day of the events.
