News, April 2008

Mari Luz case highlights big justice failures

31st March. On 7th March the body of MariLuz Cortés was found floating in the Rio Tinto estuary docks in Huelva, close to where she was kidnapped on 13th January. Mari Luz Cortés, 5 year old daughter of a gypsy pastor in Huelva, went missing on Sunday, 13th of January. She just nipped out to the sweet kiosk in the street for a packet of crisps. Huelva is just across the border from the Algarve, where British girl Madeleine went missing in May, 2007. Could there be a link? No one dared say, but MariLuz's parents rejected an offer to unite efforts in the hunt for the girls. Finally, on 26th March, convicted child abuser Santiago del Valle was arrested on charges of abusing and killing MariLuz. The case now throws up a pile of questions about how it was that del Valle was allowed to roam free despite a prison sentence for an earlier case which should have been executed.

The death of MariLuz should never have happened. Santiago del Valle had several cases behind him in which he had been shown to have abused children, especially one of his own daughters. He was found guilty and should have gone to prison, but the court never followed up the order to put him behind bars and while he regularly showed up at a police station with regard to another case.. at another court, the lack of cross referencing court and police records meant that the prison sentence was never executed. The day after Mari Luz's body was found del Valle went missing, but his wife -proven to be protecting him and psychologically unbalanced in a previous case- gave him an alibi, now withdrawn. Finally the police caught up with him and he has apparently confessed.

President Zapatero has personally phoned Juan José Cortés, MariLuz's father and assured him that justice will be done with the justice system which failed so miserably. The judge will presumably lose his job.

Although this apparently has nothing to do with the case, justice workers, who are now paid by regional governments, have been on strike for the past two months calling for salary equality with other regional government workers.

The gypsy Filadelfia church is Spain's largest evangelical denomination. Juan José Cortés, a pastor, is holding up a good testimony, despite the circumstances and media coverage. Demonstrations in 21 cities on 22nd January and in many other place thereafter, showed that the case could bring out many from the church and gypsy community as well as a much broader cross section of society.

Read here the Protestante Digital report on the burial.
Video: Protestante Digital has published this video relating to the detention of Del Valle.