Jonathan Andic called 112 at noon on December 14, 2024, after the fatal fall of his father, Isak Andic, on the Camí de les Feixades de Montserrat. He spoke with three operators, the emergency system operator, one from the Generalitat Firefighters, and a SEM nurse while he was on his way to the location. The three brief communications are reproduced by lawyer Cristóbal Martell in the 27-page appeal filed at three in the afternoon at the Barcelona Court, against the detention order for an alleged homicide crime by the victim’s son. In the three very brief calls, the founder of Mango’s son is heard crying. “I need help. I need help. My father has fallen. Ah, we are in Collbató. Yes, he has fallen.” When the operator asks if he fell or tripped, the businessman’s son responds through tears: “I think he fell off a cliff, please send someone, send an ambulance, send someone, please.”
Read more U.S. and Iran reach an agreement, but Trump has not yet given his approval, according to Axios
The appeal, accessed by La Vanguardia, begins by warning that the death of Isak Andic has presented “an exacerbated social interest fueled by a careful drip in the leaking of police investigation lines.” To ensure that Jonathan Andic’s arrest was “unnecessary” and considers it the “antechamber of graphic images” and the “informative tsunami” that has meant “a kind of unbearable anticipatory social condemnation in a Social and Democratic State of Law.” It rules out the risk of flight and insists that the indications listed by the Martorell magistrate “do not necessarily lead to the intended conclusion” by the Mossos. Since, it adds, “our exculpatory arsenal would also respond to those incriminating elements.”
According to the defense
The accused was walking ahead of his father and therefore “did not see the fall”
Martell already warns the magistrates of the Barcelona Court that he has the capacity and elements to respond to the seven indications that magistrate Raquel Nieto listed, warning that the Mossos enumerate many more in their reports, although at this stage of the procedure he will only answer those selected by the judge and detailed in her devastating detention order.
The accused was walking ahead of his father and therefore “did not see the fall,” as he was facing away at the time of death. And he explains that wherever the investigators see contradictions in the explanations Jonathan gave about what happened, there is a common element: the victim’s son “always said” he was ahead and therefore did not see the fall.
That same position on the walk serves the lawyer to devalue the footprint at the foot of the cliff that the investigators claimed was intentionally created to simulate an accidental slip. Martell assures that Jonathan Andic “never” indicated to the investigators or anyone how and where his father’s fall occurred because he did not know, as he was walking ahead and could not see it. Furthermore, he warns that the death scene was never sealed by the investigators and therefore the mentioned footprint could have been “prior” to Isak Andic’s fall, as the Catalan police Mountain Unit officers warn in one of their reports.
In his two statements as a witness at the Mossos de Martorell station, Jonathan already said he had made that route up to 4 times, the appeal warns. Also, one of the times the investigators place him “he did not complete the route due to adverse weather,” which is why he stopped almost at the same place where his father died on December 14. Martell also responds to the fact that the Mossos highlight that Jonathan Andic declared that the last time he had been in Montserrat was two weeks ago, when in reality it had been one. For the defense, this is a mere “semantic confusion” without procedural relevance.
Regarding the father-son relationship, for the lawyer the relevant thing now is that the relationship has been very good (without prejudice to moments of crisis) and “the relevance should be focused on the quality of the relationship at the time of the event.” Therefore, according to the defense, Jonathan declared that his father-son relationship was “better than ever.”
Read more Ebola in war zone: violence and rebel groups block crisis response
“Jonathan Andic states that there are no disagreements and this is a true and unquestioned reality,” the defense insists. In this regard, Andic’s lawyer asks to place the analyzed WhatsApps in the context of a “psychoanalytic therapy” and conveys that in his emails since 2024 “there was not a single reproach” between them. And Martell reproduces excerpts from the interrogations that the investigators conducted with Jonathan’s sisters and Isak’s brother. All three highlight the good relationship between them when asked, as well as Toni Ruiz, current president of Mango and trusted man of the textile empire founder, who assured at the police station that he had never witnessed a fight between father and son.
Also read
According to the defense
The area “was never sealed” and therefore the footprint could have been “prior” to the fall
Regarding the possible motive (the creation of a foundation to help the more privileged), the defense maintains that the three sons agreed and again relies on the sisters’ statements who denied Jonathan’s obsession with money, attributed to him by the investigators, or the father’s intention to disinherit him.
The defense criticizes that the Mossos claim that the path “presents no difficulty.” For Martell, “that description is laden with a non-neutral evaluative component” and he considers it contradictory to the first police report, when the Mossos reported that they had “walked 300 meters to a dangerous area with a steep slope.”
Regarding the change of phone terminal, Martell warns that Jonathan Andic changed phones biennially, as stated in a report provided by Mango’s cybersecurity manager.
He details that the accused requested his secretary at the company to change the phone on December 27, 2024, almost two weeks after his father’s death, but did not pick it up after the theft he suffered in the city of Quito, on a lightning work trip. “That indifference shows no intention aimed at hiding a criminal trail,” says the defense, mocking that the Mossos considered it “strange circumstances.” “It is not a strange circumstance to suffer a theft in Quito’s plaza, just consult open sources on theft and robbery statistics.” That 48-hour trip is also justified as being an “executive in the fashion industry who, due to his work, travels to very distant points for very specific meetings.”