The Public Prosecutor for the Environment has lodged an appeal against the court decision to acquit the Mayor of Nerja over the illegal rubbish tip.

In April the Juzgado de lo Penal número 15 cleared Mayor José Alberto Armijo (PP), of any respnsibility behind the illegal tip in a protected natural area in Río de la Miel which cost 1.6m euros to clean up, largely paid for with EU funds.

This surprising acquittal opened the path for the Mayor to be relected on May the 28th; he had been facing a 2-year prison sentence and 18 months barred from public office.

The Public Prosecutor, Fernando Benítez, says he has four motives to launch an appeal: firstly, he considers that the findings contain an infringement of law due to improper non-application of article 326 in relation to 325 of the Penal Code in determining the most favorable norm.”

Secondly, the Prosecutor percieves a “breach of the procedural rules that govern the practice and assessment of expert evidence and a violation of the right to effective judicial protection.

For its part, the third reason put forward by the Public Prosecutor’s Office is an “error in the evaluation of the evidence due to the lack of evaluation of essential documents for the resolution of the matter that have been widely used during the plenary sessions and with respect to which the resolution appealed does not even mention.”

Finally, the prosecutor warns in his letter of a “violation of the right to effective judicial protection in its aspect to the fundamental right to a process with all the guarantees due to the absence or insufficiency of reasoning and error in the assessment of the expert evidence carried out in the plenary.”

The four reasons are hard-going legalese but the gist of it is that certain factors were overlooked and not taken into account.

Editorial comment: the decision to find absolutely nobody responsible for the abberation of an area considered of natural beauty astounded everybody and anybody with a sense of decency will be fully behind the Public Prosecutor on this matter.

It was a further insult to injury that EU funds were seemingly misused to rectify the desecration of a natural park by irresponsible parties

(News: Nerja, Axarquia, Costa del Sol, Malaga, Andalucia)