The chain of custody of the remains of the (Córdoba) has raised a dense cloud of dust around the case being handled by the Civil and Investigation Section of the Court of Instance of Montoro, also in the province of Córdoba. And it has been, according to an order of February 10 signed by Judge Cristina Pastor, due to the collection of possible evidence carried out by the infrastructure manager Adif and the transfer to a warehouse owned by it in the Cordoban town of Hornachuelos, as has been announced. The World. “Adif is required to refrain from carrying out any operation aimed at the extraction or transfer of related material and of interest for the investigation of the cause and practice of any evidence on the extracted material, if it is not prior judicial authorization, as well as the immediate restitution of the material in its possession, all of this under the warning of incurring criminal liability that may be appropriate,” the ruling can be read.
A few days before, on January 26, the public company requested through a letter from the substitute judge, María Jesús Salamanca Serrano, permission to enter with heavy machinery in the place where the Iryo high-speed train derailed on January 18, causing the immediate collision of a Renfe Alvia convoy traveling in the opposite direction. The balance was 46 fatalities.
Judge María Jesús Salamanca reacted to Adif’s claim a day later, on January 27, with a procedure of preliminary proceedings in which she authorized the company dependent on the Ministry of Transport to access the site of the railway accident “provided that all vestiges and material evidence collected by Adif must be perfectly detailed, so that at all times this Court is informed of the place of their deposit, the state in which they are found and the description of all the actions that were carried out. carried out in them by sending the corresponding action report, remaining at the disposal of the Judicial Authority.”
Adif wanted to enter the affected area “with technical means and specialized personnel for the purpose of necessary infrastructure to restore the railway service, as these are urgent actions and of general interest,” he argued before the substitute judge, who was about to hand over to the new head of the Montoro court Cristina Pastor. With judicial permission in hand, the infrastructure manager proceeded to remove remains from the incident, which had not been collected in the previous days by the Civil Guard or by CIAF technical investigation personnel, to store them in company offices located in Hornachuelos (Córdoba), where they were inventoried.
Before giving way to Adif to ground zero of the incident, the substitute judge wanted to make sure that she was not going to harm the investigation. To this end, it requested a report from the Organic Unit of the Judicial Police (UOPJ) of Córdoba “indicating whether the visual inspection of the area had been completed and whether, if applicable, there would be any inconvenience to the access of heavy machinery and other measures for the purposes requested.” Through a letter dated January 27 sent by the UOPJ itself, the court was informed that “all measurements, actions and evidence collection by the Civil Guard have been completed, so there is no objection to the necessary access, repair and reconstruction.”
