No redress for alleged killer's friend

SPAIN’S General Judiciary Council (CGPJ) dismissed a complaint by Raul Rios, previously accused of assisting an alleged murderer.

He was a friend of Jonathan Moya Gonzalez, accused of abducting and killing his girlfriend’s daughter, 16-month-old Miriam Rope, in December 2012.  Moya, who is from Fiñana, is now remanded in prison and is due to stand trial in November. 

Rios was eliminated from the enquiry last February while serving a prison sentence for domestic abuse in Murcia. According to sources close to the investigation, Moya claimed that Rios helped him to cover up Miriam’s death which he insists was accidental. Rios denied this all along, claiming that WhatsApp messages between both men had nothing to do with the case and were sent before Moya had seized the child.

There was no evidence that he was involved in Miriam’s abduction and murder, ruled the investigating judge assigned to the case.  

Rios has since complained to the CGPJ that the judge ignored several requests to check evidence during the two years that he was named as a suspect.  

The council, which oversees and organises the country’s judges and courts, shelved Rios’s complaint after concluding that the judge neither delayed nor neglected his case.