The dirty war against Podemos during Mariano Rajoy’s first term continues to emerge nine years later. One of his most striking maneuvers, the setup to try to attribute cocaine trafficking to Miguel Urbán, was also used to investigate another elected political official, the Basque senator José Ramón Arrieta. Until now it had emerged that the Police tried to track down compromising information from the then leader of the party, Pablo Iglesias, with the justification of belonging to the circle of the alleged trafficker.
On January 8, 2016, an officer from the Police’s special Anti-Drug unit began to track what information the restricted databases held about Arrieta. The investigations into the senator were carried out within the framework of Operation Cardenal, as reported by the police officer to the Police Internal Affairs Unit. Operation Cardenal is the name that the agents gave to the investigations against Urbán based on the testimony of a confidant who was willing to invent a crazy story about Urbán, accusing him of selling 40 kilos of cocaine in the Madrid neighborhood of Malasaña at the time when he was a European parliamentarian.
The date of the investigations into Josetxo Arrieta explains part of the maneuver. The great montages about Podemos occurred in the first half of 2016. The political party had obtained 69 seats in the December 2015 elections, becoming the third political force in the country. An agreement for a progressive PSOE government was within reach. Four days after the maneuver against Arrieta, two right-wing media published the content of the PISA (Pablo Iglesias Sociedad Anónima) police dossier on alleged financing of the party by Iran and Venezuela. It would not be the last montage leaked to the press to wear down Podemos.
The data searches of Podemos parliamentarians in police bases are at the center of the case being investigated in the Central Investigative Court number 5 of the National Court. Within the framework of the same, the Internal Affairs Unit (UAI) of the Police asked about the search carried out on January 8, 2016 by the Unit against Crime and Organized Crime (Udyco). Between 5:46 p.m. and 5:50 p.m., agent 103,332 entered into the application called ‘Personas’: “Josetxu Arrieta”, “Arrieta”, “Aryeta Aryeta José Ramón” and, finally, “Arrieta Arrieta, José Ramón”, the exact name of the senator.
In the Internal Affairs report, to which elDiario.es has had access, the police transfer the testimony of the Anti-Drug agent: “See how the queries carried out are about variations in the affiliation data of Arrieta Arrieta, José Ramón, a fact that clearly shows that this is a regular investigative process for the identification of who could be linked to a criminal act.”
However, there is no trace of any “criminal act”, nor does the agent provide in his report the reason for the search, beyond Operation Cardinal. He also refuses to put in writing whether he did it on his own initiative or if he was ordered to do so by his superiors. “His functions as a Basic Scale investigator focused mainly on the material execution of the activities entrusted to him in terms of investigation, information or action or under the supervision of his superiors,” he simply points out.
This revelation establishes the objective of Operation Cardinal. Using the false testimony of a confidant, Commissioner José Luis Olivera managed to get the Anti-Drug Prosecutor’s Office to open an investigation against Miguel Urbán. For three months his bank accounts and (public) donations were tracked and he was accused of participating in irregular financing of the party by laundering small amounts of money, the technique known as ‘smurfing’.
But Urbán was not the end but the means. With the excuse of investigating the Anticapitalistas militant, the Police began to consult Pablo Iglesias, the leader of the group at that time, in the databases. The police officer who carried out the searches has declared in the National Court that whenever there is someone under investigation for drug trafficking, his surroundings are investigated. And his environment, for the police officer, was Pablo Iglesias. The National Court has not believed the version and has charged the police officer again, after Judge Santiago Pedraz had filed the accusation against him.
Ultimately, the object of the investigation was the party itself, Podemos, with the possibility of reaching the Government, which finally did not happen in 2016. “If we prevent them from reaching the Government, the better for everyone,” another political police commander left in a recording on a trip to New York to extract alleged compromising data from the founders of Podemos from a former minister of Hugo Chávez.
The difference with other false reports is that these investigations did not even succeed in creating a dossier to leak to related media, as had happened on so many occasions with the Catalan separatists and Podemos itself. The Anti-Drug Prosecutor’s Office quickly tired of investigating nothing solid and in three months shelved the investigation proceedings.
The former senator appears at the National Court
Former Podemos senator José Arrieta has already appeared in the case being followed by the Investigative Court number 5 of the National Court, where the latest revelations anticipate new summons. Arrieta was convicted by a War Council of the Dictatorship in 1975 for his links to ETA and was released from prison thanks to the amnesty of 1977. Before the existence of Podemos and already in democracy, he was active in Euskadiko Ezkerra and participated in initiatives against the gang’s violence.
The commissioner responsible for the setup, José Luis Olivera, testified as a witness on November 24. That day he discharged responsibility to two commanders under his command at the time of the events, when he directed the Intelligence Center against Terrorism and Organized Crime (CITCO). Olivera also told the judge that he did not even know who Miguel Urbán was and that he had to look him up “on Wikipedia.” Like others investigated in the case, Olivera will sit next spring in the dock of the Kitchen case, the parapolice espionage of Luis Bárcenas, in the time of Mariano Rajoy, charged to the reserved funds.
The facts are investigated within the case opened in the National Court against the former number two in the Ministry of the Interior, Francisco Martínez, and a group of police commanders, members of the PP political brigade.
Source: www.eldiario.es
