The ruling considers as a "certain fact and cannot be denied" that one of the four accused of a crime against Public Health arrived in Lanzarote from Madrid "with 24 wraps of cocaine and his partner with 16 more, making a total of 385.78 grams". Diógenes Liriano, 39, was arrested with drugs along with three other people at the same airport. During the oral trial he confessed "to have transported the drug". However, the evidence that triggered his arrest was based on telephone tapping that has been annulled, and the judicial ruling has acquitted the four defendants for that reason.
The events date back to 2005, when the narcotics group of the Arrecife Police Station initiated a police investigation into a 25-year-old, Wilson de Jesús, resident in Lanzarote, for his possible involvement in the acquisition and distribution of cocaine on the Island. The head of Court No. 3 of Instruction of Arrecife authorized in March 2005, the intervention, recording and listening of telephone conversations to Wilson, for a period of 30 days. But the term ended and a "mistake" occurred in the request for the extension. The tapping continued without judicial authorization, and from them subsequent telephone interventions that involved other people, and that were decisive for the arrest of the accused, were derived.
Given the lack of judicial order to continue carrying out these tappings, the Judge has considered that all recordings after April 17 are "null", and since the information by which the Police became aware that Diógenes Liriano would land with drugs in Lanzarote on May 20, was obtained by conversations after that April 17, according to the ruling, the rest of the evidence is also "contaminated by nullity". "(?) being an enormously transcendent judicial resolution since it serves to limit a fundamental right, it would be an insurmountable error", the writing states with respect to the lack of authorization to extend the time of intervention of the telephone.
Similarly, he considers that the confession that Wilson made in the trial recognizing having transported drugs "is contaminated by nullity", since "had he known that there was no lawful evidence to support the seizure of the drug, his statement could have been very different or he could even have refused to testify".
Therefore, the defendants who sat in the dock in a trial for which the Public Prosecutor's Office requested sentences of six years in prison and a fine of 100,000 euros, have been acquitted of the cause.
