The former Minister of Justice Rafael Catalá finds it surprising that in four years the alleged murderer of the young Paraguayan Romina Celeste Núñez, her husband Raúl D.C., who is free after exhausting the time of provisional imprisonment, has not been able to be tried in the first instance.
Before inaugurating a conference on commercial mediation, as president of the Spanish Mediation Center, and when asked about this case, Catalá stated that "it is surprising and worrying that in four years the judicial system has not been able to expedite the holding of a trial in those terms."
The former minister has considered that it is necessary to have information about what has happened so that, by the competent court in this matter and the Prosecutor's Office, "the times of provisional detention have been exhausted without proceeding."
"There will be some explanation, I imagine, but it is surprising that in four years a case of this nature has not been able to be tried in the first instance," he asserted.
The Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands has decided to investigate ex officio the dysfunctions that may have been registered in the procedure that continues against the alleged murderer of the young Paraguayan Romina Celeste Núñez, her husband Raúl D.C., who was released this Friday after spending four years in prison awaiting trial.
To this end, the Governing Chamber of the TSJC has appointed the president of the Audiencia de Las Palmas, Emilio Moya Valdés, as the instructor of the file, who plans to travel to Arrecife this week to verify as many aspects as necessary.
The family of the deceased fears that Raúl D.C. will flee and has expressed its outrage at the release of the alleged murderer, who is accused of homicide, mistreatment, injuries, desecration of a corpse and simulation of a crime, for the events that occurred in the early hours of New Year's Day 2019.
Court number 1 of Arrecife concluded the investigation of the case in mid-December 2019, one year after Romina Celeste's death, and summoned the parties to request the opening of an oral trial. However, three more years have passed since then without a date being set for the trial before a jury, in which the investigating judge has changed and the defense has filed numerous appeals.
Romina Celeste Núñez died on January 1, 2019 in her house in Costa Teguise. Her husband admitted before the investigating judge that he burned her body, dismembered it and threw it at different points on the coast of Lanzarote, but to date he has always denied having murdered her, since he maintains that he found his wife dead when he returned home in the early hours of the morning and that he was scared, because he feared that he would be blamed (Romina had already reported him for mistreatment).
According to the Prosecutor's Office, which is demanding a 20-year prison sentence for Raúl D.C., in his relationship with Romina Celeste there are at least other previous episodes of mistreatment: on August 8, 2018 in a hotel in Arrecife, when the young woman herself reported to the Police that he had "hit her repeatedly", and around December 29, 2019, the day she showed up at the Hospital de Lanzarote in the early hours of the morning with injuries.
However, no doctor got to see her that day, because Raúl D.C. went to the health center and took Romina away before that happened. Forty-eight hours later, she lost her life.
