Trapped Boy
Video footage has been released of the inside of the 240ft stretch of tunnel separating rescuers from the two-year-old boy who fell down the borehole in a freak accident on Sunday.
The video – taken by a rotating camera on a robot – shows part of the drop Julen Rosello will have suffered when he went down the hole.
It ends in the blockage of earth, sand and stones around three-quarters of the way down the well – believed to have been caused during the youngster’s fall – which is preventing rescue teams reaching him.
Today, there was a setback as it emerged rescuers have had to delay plans to excavate a horizontal tunnel across the hillside to try to reach the boy over fears they could cause a landslide.
They are now understood to be focusing on the other tunnel they were planning, a vertical tunnel they will create running parallel to the borehole Julen is in which is too narrow for an adult to fit into.
Casing work to shore up the inside of the well the youngster fell down is continuing.
Spain’s Most Wanted
Five Spanish police officers and one Tax Agency employee have been targeted in a sweeping court investigation into an alleged espionage network headed by a retired police chief named José Manuel Villarejo.
Villarejo who’s 67 is at the center of a case involving 20 years’ worth of phone taps, undercover recordings and other invasions of privacy against scores of politicians, business people, judges and journalists.
He is believed to have run a profitable side business by selling sensitive information to wealthy clients.
He allegedly had a network of “moles” working for him at banks, telecommunications companies and even the Tax Agency.
Although he has been in pre-trial custody since November 2017, Villarejo is thought to have ordered a trickle of recent leaks to the media, all of which have caused embarrassment to several high-profile individuals, including former Spanish King Juan Carlos I, and Justice Minister Dolores Delgado.
Last week he sent an open letter to Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez in which he threatened to disclose, in his own defense, the “real reasons” why he is being portrayed as “the country’s public enemy number one.”
Comedian Reprieve
THE Prosecutor’s Office has asked that the case against Dani Mateo, the comedian who blew his nose on the Spanish flag, be dropped.
It made the request in a letter sent to the Court of Instruction claiming the presenter’s antics did not constitute a crime of ‘outrage’ or ‘incitement to hatred’.
The Catalan comic made a public apology at the time of the performance, and now the public prosecutor has backed him by saying his work was merely ‘challenging’, not criminal.
If found guilty of a hate crime, Mateo could have faced a fine or up to four years in prison.
Mateo’s sketch on a satirical news show was excused ‘under the prism of freedom of expression’.
The Alternative Union of Police brought the original complaint following the broadcast.
Right Wing Warning
Spain’s prime minister yesterday urged lawmakers in the European Parliament not to be dragged into nationalist political movements that he said threatened the integrity of the bloc.
In a speech at the EU’s legislative branch Pedro Sanchez declared himself passionately pro-European and warned against emergent right-wing populism on the continent.