The judge of the National High Court, Ismael Moreno, has asked the Civil Guard to analyze the mobile phone of one of the victims of the shipwreck of the Galician ship Villa de Pitanxo with the aim of locating documents, videos, photographs or any other data that is useful for the investigation. .
The head of the Central Court of Instruction number 2 has agreed to the request made in May by the Criminal Investigation Section of the Civil Guard to authorize them to carry out the dump and study of a mobile found after the tragedy and that is owned by one of the deceased, according to a car to which Efe has had access this Tuesday.
After receiving the favorable report from the Prosecutor’s Office, the judge has authorized the officials of the Engineering Department of the Criminalistics Service of the armed institute to “access, forensic analysis, dump/cloning and extraction of data” to locate documents, files, programs, photographs, videos, agendas, conversations, communications and “any other analogue that could be in it and be related to the facts”.
One of the reasons why the prosecutor did not oppose this procedure is that a family member of the victim was the one who handed over the phone to the agents in case it could serve to clarify what happened.
In order to “preserve the privacy” of the victim and her family, the judge, at the request of the prosecutor, has ordered that only the contents of her mobile phone be transferred to him “and in a reserved manner” to determine whether incorporates into the case any information that it considers relevant.
In his order, the magistrate considers that access to the information that the telephone could have “may be useful for the possible clarification of the facts” and “necessary to be able to advance in the investigation.”
It argues that “it is appropriate to collect a series of information for the purpose of crime prevention and define the responsibilities of the people who may have participated”, especially when “it is a question of adequately investigating and verifying the execution of alleged criminal conduct that both at the level of the criminal response as well as at the level of social transcendence, they are extremely serious”.
The judicial investigation was born after a report from the Civil Guard, although a few days ago the magistrate also admitted for processing a complaint filed by several relatives of the victims against the ship’s skipper, Juan Padín -who already had the status of being investigated- and the shipping company, Pesquerías Nores Marín.
Precisely, this Monday the magistrate took a statement from the only three survivors of the shipwreck and agreed to release Padín with precautionary measures: prohibition to leave the country, withdrawal of the passport and fortnightly appearances in the nearest court.
The Prosecutor’s Office sees in what happened indications of 21 crimes of homicide due to serious negligence and against the rights of workers, although the complaint of the victims also contemplates another crime of false documentation.
The Villa de Pitanxo fishing vessel sank in international waters, in Newfoundland (Canada), last February, leaving 21 victims and only three survivors. The search work carried out after the shipwreck only managed to find the bodies of nine of the victims.
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