The Provincial Prosecutor’s Office of Córdoba asks the judge to adopt all the necessary guarantees in order to examine the black boxes of the trains that crashed in Adamuz on January 18. Specifically, the Public Ministry requested last week that a series of “special measures” throughout the process of extracting the recording equipment from the trains and that in the diligence the Civil Guard was presenta request to which the judge has agreed.
Sources from the investigation confirm to LA RAZÓN that, one day before the instructor ordered the analysis of the black boxes and security cameras of the Iryo train, the Prosecutor’s Office warned the court of the “risks” it could entail an eventual transfer from Madrid to the Montoro court of all the material pending analysis. Specifically, on February 26, he stated that it was “justified” that the operations were carried out in the offices of the Railway Accident Investigation Commission (CIAF), which investigates these events.
Now, the prosecutor appointed in the case asked Judge Cristina Pastor that the procedure be carried out with guarantees of respect for the chain of custody of the material that will now be analyzed by the Court of Instance of Montoro, plaza number 2. Therefore, he explained that The presence of the Judicial Police was “necessary” and the lawyer of the Administration of Justice.
Copy of the entire diligence
The objective is guarantee custody in the extraction of recording equipment (the black boxes) of the Alvia and Iryo trains. Pursuant to her request, the judge authorized access, extraction and analysis of the content of all this material, which will be analyzed at the CIAF headquarters this Thursday. In addition, he gave the green light to use any computer program that verifies the integrity of the files, their creation date and manipulation.
Subsequently, in line with what was requested by the Prosecutor’s Office, he ordered not only the presence of the Judicial Police in the proceedings, but also that they take a copy of everything analyzed for “immediate” delivery to the court. Likewise, the presence of a lawyer from the Administration of Justice is required. To this end, an appeal was issued to the Madrid Guard Court so that commission a lawyer for said performance.
Both the Prosecutor’s Office and the judge agree to these measures, after the Civil Guard warned the court that Adif took pieces from the scene of the incident in the early morning of January 22 to 23 without having judicial authorization to do so. The Armed Institute stated that the area head of the company dependent on the Ministry of Transportation gave “verbal order” that they removed welds to transport them to the Adif maintenance base in Hornachuelos (Cordova).
Doubts about Adif
In addition, tests were carried out on the rails, although the Adif employee questioned by the Civil Guard stated that These tests were not destructive. In any case, the judge reacted quickly to the police report and, in a brief order, ordered the infrastructure manager to return all the material seized that morning since, otherwise, could incur criminal liability.
Furthermore, he was expressly required to refrain from performing “any operation” related to the removal of material that is of interest for the procedure, since it can shed light on the causes of the incident in which 46 people lost their lives.
However, the Civil Guard also echoes in a more recent report, about CIAF’s suspicions with welding. In his letter, he explains that on February 10 they received an email containing a letter from the president of this commission, in which they were warned that They had detected “inconsistencies” with the welds. “Given that the aforementioned CIAF are expert technicians, additional information was requested, specifying the inconsistencies reported, and the response is currently pending,” the agents stated.