Marchena to stay as October 1 chief judge

The pres­i­dent of the Supreme Court’s crim­i­nal cham­ber and the head judge in the trial of pro-in­de­pen­dence lead­ers charged with re­bel­lion for the Oc­to­ber 1 ref­er­en­dum, Manuel Marchena, sees no rea­son to re­move him­self from the case. Marchena main­tains that he has no “di­rect or in­di­rect” in­ter­est in the pros­e­cu­tion of the so­cial and po­lit­i­cal lead­ers.

This is Marchena’s re­sponse to the ob­jec­tions put for­ward by the de­fence teams of Oriol Jun­queras, Raül Romeva, Jordi Sànchez, Jordi Tu­rull, Josep Rull, Jordi Cuixart, Carme For­cadell and Anna Simó, call­ing for his re­cusal. The pro-in­de­pen­dence lead­ers have called for Marchena to step down over the What­sapp scan­dal in­volv­ing Igna­cio Cosidó, in which the Peo­ple’s Party (PP) Sen­ate spokesman cel­e­brated the agree­ment be­tween PP and the So­cial­ist ex­ec­u­tive to ap­point Marchena as head of the Gen­eral Coun­cil of the Ju­di­ciary (CGPJ). In the leaked mes­sages, Cosidó boasted that PP would con­trol the court from “be­hind the scenes”. The scan­dal led Marchena to step back from the ap­point­ment and with the agree­ment bro­ken, Car­los Lesmes is to stay in his post as the head of the CGPJ and the Supreme Court, with Marchena re­main­ing in charge of the court that will try the lead­ers.

In Marchena’s re­sponse deny­ing any in­ter­est in the pros­e­cu­tions, he points out that this is the sev­enth de­mand for re­cusals from the de­fences of the pro-in­de­pen­dence lead­ers, in “a de­fen­sive strat­egy that forces the cham­ber to once and again jus­tify its dis­tance in re­gard to the ob­ject of the pro­ceed­ings.”

In the five-page writ­ten re­sponse, Marchena also dis­so­ci­ates him­self from Cosidó and re­jects the ac­cu­sa­tions that the ju­di­ciary has be­come politi­cised. He also re­jects the ac­cu­sa­tions that the CGPJ’s ap­point­ment process is po­lit­i­cally con­t­a­m­i­nated, with ap­point­ments in­volv­ing a score of politi­cians, lead­ing to po­lit­i­cal agree­ments, as in this case.