The Constitutional Court rejects Cerdán's appeal to be released from prison.

The Constitutional Court (TC) has refused to admit the appeal by former PSOE Organization Secretary Santos Cerdán against his provisional imprisonment, which was ordered by the judge in the Koldo case on June 30.

Legal sources have informed EFE that the Second Section, composed of progressive judge Juan Carlos Campo and conservative judges Ricardo Enríquez and José María Macías (speaker), has unanimously rejected the appeal for protection.

The court considers that the appeal does not have the special constitutional significance claimed by Cerdán and required by law, given that constitutional doctrine already exists on the need to justify pretrial detention by justifying constitutionally legitimate purposes, as well as on the prohibition of using this measure for coercive purposes.

Furthermore, regarding the violation of the right to defense alleged by the lawyers, the appeal is inadmissible due to failure to exhaust all legal remedies, as this complaint was not invoked in a timely manner before the Supreme Court prior to the appeal for protection.

This was a decision that was expected, as these types of appeals rarely succeed because they are taken during the investigation phase. That is, the judicial proceedings are still ongoing, and the Court of Guarantees does not usually intervene in these situations, the sources explain.

In its appeal, Cerdán's defense team considered that the Supreme Court had violated his right to liberty and the presumption of innocence by ordering his imprisonment without properly justifying "the existence of any risk of alteration or destruction of evidence" on which it based its decision to order this measure.

"Establishing as the sole reason for presuming a risk of alteration or destruction of evidence (...) a supposed managerial role on the part of Mr. Cerdán inferred solely by a subjective analysis in relation to some audio recordings whose veracity we do not know to date (...) is completely insufficient and does not meet the standards required" by the doctrine of the Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights, the appeal stated.

The Constitutional Court's refusal follows the recent decision by Supreme Court Justice Leopoldo Puente, who just a few days ago rejected Santos Cerdán's release for the second time, emphasizing that the risk of evidence being destroyed persists, but adding that it "foreseeably" will not extend beyond this year.