The Court dismisses the Prosecutor's request for Raúl Díaz to sign daily in court

The Las Palmas Court does not see reasons to justify, as requested by the Prosecutor's Office, that the husband and alleged murderer of the young Paraguayan Romina Celeste Núñez be forced to appear in court every day after having moved from Lanzarote to Madrid, instead of once a week.

In an order made public this Tuesday, the second section of the Provincial Court confirms all the security measures imposed on Raúl D.C. last January 12, when it ordered his release after having already served four years in pre-trial detention, the maximum time allowed by law without having gone through a trial.

Specifically, he was obliged to inform the court of an address in Spain, he was forbidden to leave Spain, his passport was withdrawn and he was summoned to appear once a week in court until he is summoned to answer before a jury for the alleged homicide of his wife, which occurred in Lanzarote on New Year's Eve 2019.

The Prosecutor's Office appealed these measures because it saw a high risk that Raúl D.C. would flee from Justice, even more accentuated since it became known that he had moved from Costa Teguise to Madrid, by putting at his disposal - the Public Prosecutor's Office emphasized - the possibility of leaving Spain in a few hours without depending on air or sea transport subject to documentation control (as was the case when he lived in the Canary Islands).

The magistrates respond to the prosecutor that he wields "mere suspicions" lacking "the minimum evidentiary support" and remind him that, so far, Romina Celeste Núñez's husband has complied with his weekly mandatory visit to the courts.

In their opinion, the Prosecutor's Office argues that "there would be a strategy by the defense to delay the procedure until completing no less than four years of pre-trial detention, travel to the peninsula and plan the removal from the action of Justice".

The Las Palmas Court acknowledges that it is possible that the defendant will flee, but specifies that "this risk always exists and in all cases" in which a defendant is released on bail and considers that making him go through a court every day would not prevent him from leaving the country.

"If the intention of the defendant is to flee, from Madrid in 24 hours he can travel many more than 1,000 kilometers, in addition to taking a plane, and the appropriateness of the defendant residing in Madrid has not been questioned, avoiding any encounter with witnesses or people from the victim's environment that could occur if he resided on the island of Lanzarote," he adds.

During the investigation, Raúl D.C. admitted that he burned, dismembered and threw his wife's body into the sea, but he has always denied having killed her. His version of what happened to date is that he found her dead at home when he returned from a party on New Year's Eve and that he got scared and decided to make the body disappear, because he feared that he would be accused of the crime (his wife had already reported him once for mistreatment).

So far, the defendant only faces charges of homicide, not murder, because only some tissues were recovered from Romina Celeste Núñez's body on the coast of Lanzarote that do not allow to establish if aggravating circumstances such as treachery or cruelty mediated in her death.