THE TOOL EXISTED — AND WAS USED ON SOMEONE ELSE

Before following the escalation towards the trial, a small piece worth an entire plea. In the case file there is a home-address query to the National Statistics Institute / judicial neutral access point, dated 26 September 2018 (DOC-0145, pp. 70-72) — the ordinary tool with which any court locates a person in minutes.

The query was not about Apolozan. It was about a third person in the proceedings.

About Apolozan — the man whose supposed non-location was about to ground, in the immediate weeks, a European Arrest Warrant and an INTERPOL notice — no such query appears. Neither that one nor any other: in the two volumes of the case file there is not a single home-address inquiry in his name. Meanwhile, his address was certified in the AEAT system since 21 May of that same year (DOC-0226).

This asymmetry is the advance answer to the only possible defence of the deployment that follows: "he could not be located". The court knew how to locate — it was doing so, in that very case, in those very weeks, with another person. The tool worked. It simply was not pointed at the one it was not convenient to find.