SPAIN TRIAL OVER ‘ STOLEN BABIES’ SET TO RESUME

MADRID: Spain’s first trial linked to thousands of suspected cases of babies stolen from their mothers during the Franco era will resume in a Madrid court on Tuesday, decades after the scandal broke. Eduardo Vela, 85, a former gynecologist at the nowdefunct San Ramon clinic in Madrid, is accused of having in 1969 taken Ines Madrigal, now aged 49, from her biological mother and given her to another woman, who then raised her and was falsely certified as her birth mother. During questioning in the opening session of the trial on June 26, Vela said he could not remember details of how the clinic, which he ran for 20 years up to 1982 and is believed to have been a center for baby trafficking, operated and that the signature on Madrigal’s birth certificate was not his. Vela — the first person prosecuted over the “stolen babies” scandal which broke in the media in the 1980s — was due to return to the witness stand the following day but instead he went to hospital after falling ill. No date has been given for when a verdict will be handed down. Six other people are scheduled to testify, including a journalist with French public television station France 2 who used a hidden camera to record Vela as he appeared to confess to having given Madrigal away as a “gift”. She will answer questions by video conference, according to a court source. Prosecutors are seeking an 11-year jail sentence for falsifying official documents, illegal adoption, unlawful detention and certifying a non- existent birth.