MARI LUZ DEATH – INQUIRY ORDERED INTO TRAGIC ERROR

The case of five-year-old Mari Luz Cortés who was found dead in a river 55 days after disappearing from her home in Huelva turned even uglier when it was revealed that the man arrested on suspicion of her murder, Santiago del Valle García, had been reporting to a court in Sevilla every two weeks while waiting to be sent to jail for having sexually abused his own daughter. The authorities are now trying work out how Del Valle was walking around free, while the judge who had sentenced him to two years and nine months in jail in January 2006 believed the sentence had been carried out. The government in Madrid has ordered the General Council of Judicial Power (CGPJ) to investigate "to the end" what Deputy Prime Minister María Teresa Fernández de la Vega called "a very serious, terrible and tragic judicial error". It is already known that the judge who sentenced Del Valle, Rafael Tirado, was sanctioned by the CGPJ in 1995 for negligence in a case involving a battered child. Since being jailed in Huelva last Tuesday night, Del Valle and his sister, who is charged with aiding and abetting him, have not left their cells at all, not even to eat or go to the bathroom. The police said they could not guarantee their safety if they came into contact with the other prisoners. Del Valle's mentally disadvantaged wife, also charged with aiding and abetting her husband, was released with charges and is now reported to have left Huelva province. De Valle claims Mari Luz slipped and fell down the stairs when he invited her into his house just round the corner from the girl's family. He and his wife panicked and the his sister helped them to abandon the body in the river two kilometres from the girl's home. About 300 people gathered outside the Huelva court house last Tuesday when they heard that the couple were to be brought there that afternoon. It almost turned in to a lynching party when the girl's grandfather, Juan Cortés, told reporters he could not be held responsible for the safety of Del Valle's family. But the girl's father, Juan José Cortés, has been trying to defuse the situation. He is directing his anger towards the court in Sevilla and has said he intends to take legal action because his daughter would be alive today if Del Valle's jail sentence had been carried out.