Three women in Catalonia remain unable to consult an archived inquiry into the rapes they suffered. Prosecutors obtained a DNA profile for a second attacker but closed the investigation because the crimes had prescribed.
DNA analysis produced a profile for a second attacker in a series of rapes in Catalonia, but police never identified him. The Fiscalía archived its inquiry on 27 July because the crimes had prescribed. Three victims still cannot see the investigation file, despite the prosecutor’s recognition of their legitimate interest in knowing what happened.
Since September, Cristina has sought access and a copy of the file, as have Nuria and Yolanda. They have received refusals through several channels, but no official explanation. The Fiscalía has told EL PAÍS that it has doubts about granting access because of data protection. Its senior prosecutor, Francisco Bañeres, declined to respond officially.
That position is disputed by Santiago Torres, a former judge and practising lawyer who represents none of the women. He argues that data protection does not prevent victims from accessing material about their own case. He points to the EU Victims’ Rights Directive 2012/29/EU and Spain’s 2015 Victim Statute. A Fiscalía circular dated 20 December 2022 says victims may request direct access to an investigation file at the office that handled it, without a lawyer.
The legal question is complicated by the Fiscalía’s position in a separate National Court proceeding. There, it argued that archived investigative files are reserved, while victims may still access them. The Catalan office had not issued an official legal explanation for refusing the women when EL PAÍS reported the case.
The inquiry concerns a series that sent two innocent men to prison in the 1990s. At least 16 women were attacked, four of them minors. The two offenders used the same methods, but only one was arrested and convicted; he never identified his accomplice.
DNA testing found profiles belonging to Antonio García Carbonell and an unidentified man. Ahmed Tommouhi had been mistaken for García Carbonell. After the Supreme Court overturned all of Tommouhi’s convictions, it ordered the state to pay him €2.5 million, the largest compensation for a judicial error in Spain’s democratic era. He had spent 15 years in prison.
Abderrazak Mounib fared worse. Three years after the Supreme Court recognised his innocence in the first rape case, he died in prison in April 2000 while awaiting examination of the other cases. The unidentified attacker was never found, and the crime prescribed. The women want to understand how their cases were investigated and why the perpetrator remained unidentified. The role of prosecutors in separate disputes over criminal cases has also featured in another Spanish case.
