At the request of a corrupt judge, a magistrate sends a spanish journalist to the dock

A lawsuit brought by the corrupt ex judge Salvador Alba will take Carlos Sosa, editor-in-chief of Canarias Ahora, to the dock. A Madrid court has decided to open an oral hearing against the journalist for information published by Canarias Ahora –a news outlet linked to elDiario.es– about Salvador Alba and his conspiracy against Victoria Rosell and Sosa himself that ultimately led Alba to prison.

Taking over most of the premises in the complaint brought by the imprisoned ex-magistrate, judge María Ángeles Velázquez is demanding Sosa a bail of 422,500 euros. She's ruling against the Prosecutor's Office opinion, that considered the news published about Alba and his conspiracy by Canarias Ahora to be truthful, concerning a public matter of the highest importance, and not revealing any confidential information of the ex-magistrate nor his family: “It was the legitimate exercise of his fundamental right to freedom of information”. It's up to the Provincial Court of Madrid to decide now whether or not the case will go to trial.

Salvador Alba was expelled from the judicial career after being sentenced to six and a half years in prison. Alba was convicted of using his position as a magistrate in the Canary Islands to conspire against another magistrate, Victoria Rosell, putting an end to her then emerging career with the political party Podemos. The Supreme Court deemed proven that Alba had tried to incriminate Rosell and Sosa, her partner, in a court case using a doctored statement of the businessman Miguel Ángel Ramírez. The goal was to induce a judicial action against the magistrate, a complaint by the Minister of Industry José Manuel Soria or an investigation by the Prosecutor's Office, that would cut off her political career. Although Rosell was never charged, she did quit politics.

Alba's conspiracy was discovered and the former magistrate ended up entering prison in October 2022, convicted of perversion of justice, bribery and falsified document. But a few months before entering the prison of El Salto Negro, the corrupt ex-judge went on the attack against his victims filing a criminal complaint for disclosure of secrets, hate crime, harassment and criminal organization. The complaint was against elDiario.es, its delegation Canarias Ahora, Carlos Sosa, Victoria Rosell, two journalists, and even Ignacio Escolar, editor-in-chief of elDiario.es.

According to Alba and his wife, Teresa Lorenzo, the news about the conspiracy that has cost him jail time was not intended to inform but to destroy his reputation. In his lawsuit he claimed that the data had come out of a secret court case, that there was personal and medical information included in the news, that he and his partner suffered hateful insults on the Internet after the publication, and that all of this affected even their daughter, still underage.

Although the secret of summary proceedings has not been decreed, judge Velázquez has been warning throughout the process about the consequences that disclosing the contents of the case would have. In her order of abbreviated procedure (ratified in a later opening of oral hearing) she assumes a significant share of Alba's premises and leaves the case to a criminal court that should hold a trial for the crimes of disclosure of secrets, hate and harassment (but not for criminal organization). She also imposes the bail of 422,500 euros requested by Alba, seven times the compensation imposed on Alba for conspiring against Rosell at his court.

The Public Prosecutor's Office asks for the case to be dismissed

In addition to almost half a million euros, former judge Alba asks in his indictment for a 23 years imprisonment for Carlos Sosa for six different crimes. The criminal theory he exposes about the origin of the information and data published has been rejected by the Madrid Prosecutor's Office in a document submitted in mid-January asking for the case to be dismissed and for the journalist of Canarias Ahora not to be tried. The document said that the news published were “of public relevance” with data “exclusively concernig newsworthy facts” and not constituting a string of crimes punishable by imprisonment: “It was the legitimate exercise of his fundamental right to freedom of information, not harming in any case the right to privacy of the plaintiff and his family”.

Among other details, many of the information that Alba pointed to in his complaint referred to the time that it took for the General Council of the Judiciary to locate and inform him about his suspension as a magistrate. It also referred to the vacation he took without ruling on the Faycán corruption case, or to the contacts that he and his wife maintained with members of [the extreme right political party] Vox. According to the Prosecutor's Office, the information about the allegations made by Alba himself about his state of health, or the suppositions about his travels at the moment, were truthful and did not impact on his privacy in an illegal way.

According to the Public Prosecutor's Office, Sosa “is a journalist covering a piece of information of public interest and clear significance, obtained in a lawful manner and published omitting data that could affect the privacy of the victim and his family”. Quite the opposite of what Alba's lawsuit states in no uncertain terms.

Based on the same foundations, Sosa has presented an appeal before the Provincial Court of Madrid requesting the annulment of his indictment. He charges Alba of “grossly misrepresenting the truth”, tampering with the dates of the process to make the judge believe that the information came not from the journalistic work of Canarias Ahora's staff but from a secret judicial investigation in which Sosa and Rosell were personally involved. The conversation between Judge Alba and businessman Miguel Ángel Ramírez is an example of this: it was published on May 12, 2016, two weeks before the opening of the case in the High Court of the Canary Islands and almost one year before the admission of Sosa as a defendant in the process.

In conclusion, the appeal states, “it cannot be implied that the defendant has published a single piece of information unlawfully obtained”, regardless of the fact that the criminal organization charges brought by Alba have been valid to attribute to Sosa all the information published in the newspaper, even if it was not signed by him, even if it was not published by Canarias Ahora.

In the appeal, Sosa also criticized Alba for trying to attribute to him the discomfort suffered by his young daughter after conflicts at school related to the legal proceedings against her father: “Evidently the child did not suffer as a consequence of the news about the incident, which we presume she did not read, but because of the incident itself”.

The journalist goes one by one through the opinions and news signed by him to sustain, as the Public Prosecutor's Office has also done, that none of them published Alba's medical data that were not relevant for the judicial process and his imprisonment, or when the General Council of the Judiciary previously tried to locate Alba and inform him of his suspension as a judge.

The journalist also denies having photographed the Alba-Lorenzo couple: “Mr. Sosa has never been in the vicinity of the home of the plaintiffs, nor has he ever ordered any photographer or journalist to go to that home, or to a beach, or to a restaurant, to immortalise the lives of these people”.

Alba's hunt against Rosell

Alba and Rosell were magistrates in the Canary Islands when their paths crossed. Rosell entered politics at the hand of Podemos and Alba took charge of her court. With the aim of cutting Rosell's political career short, it was then when Alba decided to alter a court case he was dealing with in order to implicate both Rosell and journalist Carlos Sosa (Rosell's husband) in a case of business corruption.

According to the courts, to implicate Carlos Sosa in the investigation that was still open Alba tried to get the businesman Miguel Ángel Ramírez to change his statement (Ramírez is the president of Unión Deportiva Las Palmas, a soccer team). Alba also tried to involve Rosell so that she could be accused of having tried to cover up the case to protect her husband.

As a result of that, right at the beginning of her political career with Podemos, Rosell was singled out with an investigation by the Public Prosecutor's Office and a complaint by former Minister José Manuel Soria. None of the investigations ever prospered, and Rosell was never charged, but at the time it was enough for her to quit politics.

Eventually, the investigators discovered that it was all a ploy by Salvador Alba and that he was the one who had committed a crime. He was charged, investigated and finally convicted for hatching the whole plot to end Rosell's political career, who over the years returned to public life and became Secretary of State against gender violence. The Supreme Court sentenced Alba to six and a half years in jail for this conspiracy, a sentence he is currently serving in prison.