A sudden turn in the investigation into the murder, on February 9, of two Civil Guard officers in the port of Barbate (Cádiz) after their boat was rammed by a narco speedboat. Ten videos provided to the court by the defenses of the six detainees – who remain in provisional prison – raise doubts about their involvement in the events, after experts from the Civil Guard have corroborated that they are not manipulated. The images of one of the videos, revealed on Friday by El Independiente and also accessed by EL PAÍS, are supposedly recorded by one of the detainees from the boat they were traveling in. It is observed that, as the accused declared in court, their narco speedboat was more than 250 meters away from the scene and that it was other boats that were harassing the zodiac with the six Civil Guard officers. Two of them died in the crash and four others were injured.
After the incorporation of the videos into the case file, the judge of the Court of First Instance and Instruction 1 of Barbate, Ángel Rojas Navarro, who is handling the case, issued a ruling last Tuesday opening a new line of investigation. He requested information from a court in Chiclana de la Frontera about the discovery, the day after the incident, of another narco speedboat with significant damage to its hull on a beach in that town and whose occupants have not been identified so far. The boat in which the six detainees were traveling was found on a beach in La Línea de la Concepción with marks on its hull. Initially, two expert reports from the Civil Guard indicated that these marks were consistent with a collision with the zodiac with the deceased officers.
The six detainees confirmed in their statement in court that they were on one of the narco speedboats that sought shelter from the storm in the port of Barbate, but denied that their boat was the one that hit the agents’ zodiac. The judge who initiated the investigation ordered them to be remanded in custody accused of two counts of murder, four counts of attempted murder, six counts of aggravated assault, one count of smuggling, and one count of serious resistance to a law enforcement officer. The appeals filed by the defenses against the imprisonment were rejected by the Provincial Court of Cádiz last week. Defense sources claim that the video now submitted along with a forensic report commissioned by the lawyers corroborates what their clients have maintained from the beginning: that they were not responsible for the officers’ deaths.
The recording, made from the boat occupied by the suspects, was submitted “at the first moment” when the investigating judge allowed it to be done, that is, within five days after the arrests. They add that they have subsequently submitted another report to the court emphasizing the importance of this recording, with an analysis and description of what happens in each fragment, and its relation to other videos submitted, such as the one from the GoPro camera carried by one of the Civil Guard officers on the attacked boat in Barbate. The defense sources are calling for further investigations to be carried out.
