The trial against Dimas Martín for the Los Rostros piece of the Unión case ended this Thursday with the Public Prosecutor's Office requesting that proceedings be opened against one of the witnesses who testified on this last day, David Gutiérrez Marichal. The prosecutor believes that he could have incurred in a crime of false testimony and has accused him of "disrespecting the intellect of the court" with his "lack of memory".
The report drawn up by Seprona when he visited the illegal works that were being carried out on this family farm of Dimas Martín reflects that Marichal was there and was identified as responsible for the work, despite the fact that he has denied it during the trial, stating that he does not know "how to put a block". And he also appears in the telephone conversations intercepted by the UCO, calling the historical leader of the PIL after the visit of the Seprona agent. However, during the hearing he did not remember anything. Not even the previous statement he made in the Court during the investigation of this case, nor the conversations that have been heard during the trial and in which his voice appears. He has only confirmed that he had a "friendship" with Dimas Martín.
"Do you usually have memory problems?", the prosecutor, Javier Ródenas, asked him during the interrogation. "Yes", he replied. "And do you take any medication?", he then asked, to which the witness replied affirmatively again. "And what is it? Or don't you remember either", the prosecutor questioned, without getting an answer. "Let's see gentleman, or Mr. Prosecutor, I don't remember", the witness kept repeating like a mantra.
"I don't even remember what I went for or if I met with someone"
"I don't remember what I went for, or if I met with someone, or who I met with", Gutiérrez Marichal stated, when he was asked to explain what he was doing on the farm when Seprona came. In fact, initially he did not even remember having been there that day. "No idea, I don't remember", he began answering. And when the prosecutor referred to the report drawn up by the agent, he replied that he "was walking" in the direction of the farm, but that he was not there yet, and that they asked him to identify himself. "I don't even know what I went there for", he repeated again.
That's when Judge Margarita Gómez intervened for the first time, who had to call the witness's attention several times during this interrogation. "I remind you that the crime of false testimony is punishable by imprisonment and a fine", warned the head of the Criminal Court Number 1.
But despite the warning, the memory lapses continued. "Don't you remember if you spoke to Dimas on the phone afterwards?", the prosecutor insisted, to which the witness replied again that he did not. "If you want I'll play the conversation", Ródenas insisted, who finally opted to do so. "Well, we are going to play the conversation to see if that makes you remember, if your illness allows it".
"What the prosecutor is asking you is if it is your voice"
Two telephone conversations between David Gutiérrez Marichal and Dimas Martín were then heard again in the courtroom. In one of them, Marichal informed Dimas that Seprona had come to the farm and even told him that he was thinking of reprimanding the agent for entering the property. In the other, he also gave him details of how the works were going, explained that "the roofs" were already in place and Dimas gave him instructions to go and collect more material.
"Is it your voice?", the prosecutor asked him after listening to the first of the conversations. "I don't remember", the witness replied again, prompting a new intervention from the judge. "What the prosecutor is asking you is if it is your voice", she emphasized. "If that's my voice, I don't remember", Marichal replied again, further straining the atmosphere of the interrogation. "Don't you remember your voice either?, and do you remember what you just heard in that conversation or have you already forgotten?", Ródenas asked him.
"Well, not everything, it's a small conversation. I've never had such a long conversation", he replied after listening to that recording of a few minutes. "We are not here to waste time, this is a trial", the judge warned again. And similar scenes were repeated when the prosecutor asked to listen to the second recording, in which Dimas Martín says to David Gutiérrez Marichal: "I have already told Lemes that you are doing the work".
"The most I hear there is rain"
"Why does Dimas say that you are doing the work?", Ródenas insisted. "I don't know, I don't remember", the witness repeated again. "The most I hear there is rain. That's the most I hear. Rain, rain and rain", he said, to avoid answering about the content of that conversation, in which some wind could be heard in the background. "We have all heard the others", the prosecutor stressed. "I'm not telling you that it may or may not be, but I don't remember. I don't do any work", he insisted.
This last sentence is another of the ones that the witness has repeated the most during his statement. "I don't understand about works. I don't know how to do anything of a work. I don't even know how to put a block", he has been answering at different times of the interrogation. This has been answered by the prosecutor with the telephone conversations and with the statement that the same witness made in the Court, when he was called to testify in the investigation phase, and in which he stated that he worked as a laborer. "I don't remember", was heard again when Ródenas asked him about the content of that statement. On this, the only thing that the witness has clarified is that he "may have worked as a laborer", but "seven or eight months". And at the end of his statement he also wanted to clarify that "if he ever" did "something" on that Dimas' farm "he was not forced".
"Do you think you can come like this to a Court?", the prosecutor reproached him, who asked that the witness not leave the room until the end of the hearing. There, when presenting the final conclusions of the trial, he asked that testimony be deduced against David Gutiérrez Marichal for a possible crime of false testimony. "I don't know if it's true that he has a mental illness", Ródenas questioned, who asked that the facts be investigated, not only for his "lack of memory", but because he has not been able to "recognize even his own voice" during the trial.
