The judge has withdrawn the passport of the boss of Villa de Pitanxo and has prohibited him from leaving Spain. He must also appear before the court every 15 days. These are the precautionary measures that the prosecutor in the case had requested and assume that, as the families of the deceased sailors had requested, Juan Padín cannot go out to fish while the investigation lasts.
A private accusation has demanded provisional prison, a measure that the judge has ruled out when considering that there is no risk of flight due to the roots in Spain of the investigated.
Padín has appeared this Monday as a defendant in the National Court, which is investigating the reasons for the shipwreck that left 21 dead in the waters of Newfoundland. He is accused of 21 reckless homicides and a crime against the rights of workers.
The indictment is based on the account of one of the only three survivors, the Ghanaian-born sailor Samuel Kwesi. The other two are the boss himself and his nephew. The three have met again before the judge of the National Court Ismael Moreno.
The Ghanaian sailor’s version is that the captain refused to cut the rigging despite the fact that the harvesting machinery was not working properly and the ship was listing dangerously. That of the captain and his nephew, that the engines stopped and it was that fault that, together with the rough seas, caused the shipwreck.
Another point of discrepancy is that of the survival suits, necessary to survive in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic. The boss maintains that he gave the order to put them on, while Kwesi affirms that this was not the case.
Only the captain and his nephew wore them. Several of the deceased were due to hypothermia. They managed to get into one of the life rafts, but they died from the cold and their body slipped into the water through the hole created in the bottom by a collision with the ship. None of the nine bodies recovered were wearing the special suits.
The investigation has also revealed that the ship was equipped with rescue measures for 22 people, despite which 24 were on board.
Conforms to The Trust Project criteria
