The public prosecution asks for a punishment of between 7 and 25 years in
prison for the 12 accused independence leaders
The oral hearing is already underway. The former Vice
President of the Generalitat Oriol Junqueras and 11 pro-independence leaders will be judged from this Tuesday in the Supreme Court for the attempted secession of Catalonia from the rest of Spain in the fall of 2017. This attempt included the
approval in the Parliament of laws of breakup with the State, the organization
and celebration of an illegal referendum that had been banned by the
Constitutional Court, and the unilateral declaration of independence of October 27, 2017, which triggered the application of Article 155 of the
Constitution and intervention of Catalan autonomy. The high court estimates that the sessions will last
around three months and will include more than 500
witnesses. These are the keys to the trial.
1. What is judged?
The Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court, chaired
by Manuel Marchena, must decide whether the conduct of the accused during the chain of events of at least two years
which culminated in the unilateral declaration of independence fits into the crimes of rebellion, sedition or embezzlement that the
accusations appreciate. The court will examine, through the statements of
defendants, witnesses and experts, as well as with the various documentary
evidence, if in the key days of the procés
there were the elements of "violent uprising" or "tumultuous"
that require, respectively, the crimes of rebellion and sedition, which are among
the most serious of the Criminal Code. The altercations and incidents that,
according to the Prosecution and the popular accusation of Vox, allow to speak
of "violent" uprising occurred mainly on two specific dates:
September 20, 2017 and October 1 of that year.
2. What happened on September 20, 2017?
That day, a crowd of 40.000 people allegedly
tried to prevent Operation Anubis from the Civil Guard against the preparations
for the illegal consultation on October 1 in front of the Ministry of Economy
of the Generalitat. This operation, ordered by the Court of Inquiry 13 of
Barcelona, led by the late Juan Antonio Ramírez Sunyer, was hampered by a
human mass, convened by the then leaders of the pro-sovereignty entities
Òmnium and ANC, Jordi Cuixart y Jordi Sànchez. In the altercations, two vehicles of the Civil
Guard were practically destroyed by the demonstrators and the lawyer of the
court was forced to leave the Ministry through the roof.
3. What happened on October 1?
On that day, the Generalitat of Catalonia chaired
by Carles Puigdemont, applied the so-called disconnection laws approved on 6
and 7 September, and organized a referendum on independence. In spite of the fact that this consultation had
been suspended by the Constitutional Court - which had imposed coercive fines on the members of the so-called
Electoral Commission - and banned by the Higher Court of Justice of Catalonia,
hundreds of polling stations opened that day throughout the community in an act
of defiance to the Government.
The Executive of Mariano Rajoy responded with force to try to prevent the
referendum. Thousands of national police and
civil guards, mobilized from different parts of Spain, charged against the
people who tried to vote in the illegal consultation and who prevented the
judicial order to close the schools from being carried out. "We have done
what we had to do, acting with the law and only the law," Rajoy said at
the time. The Government of Carles Puigdemont estimated in 844 people assisted by medical
services after the police charges - many of them for contusions and anxiety attacks. One citizen lost one eye
for police action and another one was treated for a heart attack. According to
the Government, 111 antiriot officers were injured on that day.
The Mossos d’Esquadra remained on that day in a passive attitude despite the fact that they also had the judicial
mandate to avoid holding the referendum in coordination with the state security
forces. Therefore, the highest ranks of the Catalan police, with Major Josep
Lluís Trapero, are prosecuted for rebellion in the National High Court. The
Mossos maintain that they acted in accordance with the judge's order to
guarantee "citizen coexistence". The Generalitat claimed the validity
of the consultation, in which the yes obtained 90% of the votes with a
participation of 42% of the electoral census, according to their figures.
4. Who are the accused?
The 12 civil and political leaders of procés who will sit on the bench are the former vice-president of the Generalitat
Oriol Junqueras; former ministers Joaquim Forn (Interior), Jordi Turull
(Presidency), Raül Romeva (Foreign), Dolors Bassa (Labor), Josep Rull
(Territory), Meritxell Borràs (Government), Carles Mundó (Justice) and Santi
Vila (Businesses); the former president of the Board of Parliament Carme
Forcadell; the president of Òmnium Cultural, Jordi Cuixart,
and the ex-leader of Asamblea Nacional Catalana (ANC), Jordi Sànchez, currently member of Parliament in the PDeCAT list.
5. Who are the accusations in the trial?
The three accusations present at the oral hearing
are the Prosecutor's Office of the Supreme Court (represented by the
prosecutors Consuelo Madrigal, Javier Zaragoza, Fidel Cadena and Jaime Moreno),
the State Attorney General (represented by the state attorneys Rosa María
Seoane State attorneys - chief of the criminal area- and Elena Sáenz), and the popular accusation of the extreme-right
party Vox (through the party's general secretary, Javier
Ortega, and Pedro Fernández).
6. What are they accused of?
The nine defendants in prison - Oriol Junqueras, Joaquim Forn, Jordi Turull, Raül Romeva, Dolors Bassa,
Josep Rull, Jordi Cuixart, Jordi Sànchez and Carme Forcadell - will be tried,
at the request of the Prosecutor's Office, for the crime of rebellion (the State
Attorney General has reduced the crime to sedition). Likewise, the first six,
who during the independence procés
were members of the Govern, will be judged for embezzlement, as will former
ministers Meritxell Borràs, Carles Mundó and Santi Vila. These last three are
not accused of rebellion, but of disobedience. Vox also considers that the 12
committed a crime of criminal organization.
7. ¿Why Carles
Puigdemont is not included among these defendants?
The former president Carles Puigdemont escaped from Spain since October, 29, 2017 and is located in Waterloo (Belgium). The investigating judge of the case, Pablo Llarena, chose to withdraw the international and European
Arrest Warrant issued against him and all the fugitives, who will only be tried if they return to Spain. The
magistrate did so after the judicial authorities of Belgium and Germany
rejected the delivery of Puigdemont to Spain for the crime of rebellion. In a
similar situation are the former ministers Antoni Comín (Health), Lluís Puig
(Culture) and Meritxell Serret (Agriculture, Livestock and Fishing), escaped to
Belgium; the former minister Clara Ponsatí (Educación), who
lives in the UK,, and the ex-members of
Parliament Marta Rovira (Junts pel Sí) and Anna Gabriel (CUP), fled to Switzerland.
8. What penalties are the 12 defendants facing?
The Public prosecutors ask for Oriol Junqueras
25 years of prison and disqualification (the State Attorney, 12 years). For Joaquim Forn, Jordi Turull, Raül Romeva,
Dolors Bassa and Josep Rull, the public prosecutor asks for 16 years in prison
and disqualification and the State Attorney, 11 years and six months. Jordi
Sànchez, Jordi Cuixart and Carme Forcadell face 17 years in prison and disqualification
at the request of the Prosecutor's Office; for the first two, the State
Attorney asks for eight years and for Forcadell, ten. These nine are the independence leaders in
prison.
For those who are released on bail, Meritxell
Borràs, Carles Mundó and Santi Vila, the Prosecutor's Office requests seven
years in prison and 16 years of disqualification, plus a fine of 30,000 euros.
The State Attorney requests for them, on the other hand, seven years in prison
and 10 years of disqualification.
On the other hand, Vox asks for 20 years of
disqualification for all the defendants, in addition to 74 years in prison for
Junqueras, Forn, Turull, Romeva, Bassa and Rull; 62 years in prison for
Sànchez, Cuixart and Forcadell, and 24 for Borràs, Mundó and Vila. All the
defenses request the free acquittal of their representatives.
9. Who will judge
the facts?
The trial court is composed of seven magistrates of
the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court. The judges will sit in order of
seniority in the high court. . In the center, the president, Manuel Marchena, and on both sides the magistrates Andrés Martínez Arrieta, Juan Ramón
Berdugo, Luciano Varela, Antonio del Moral, Andrés Palomo and Ana Ferrer. Although the magistrates have not intervened in the
resolution of appeals in the investigation phase, Marchena, Berdugo, Martínez
Arrieta and Varela were part of the court that granted the Supreme Court
competence to investigate the role in the procés
of defendants with parliamentary immunity.
10. Who have been summoned as witnesses?
The public Prosecutor's Office has requested 256 witnesses
and the State Attorney has adhered to these petitions. The private accusation
of Vox has asked for about 60. And the defense has requested more than 400. The Court has accepted the appearance of more than 500, among which are the
former president of the Government Mariano Rajoy; the president of the
Parlament, Roger Torrent; the mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau; the former president
Artur Mas, the lehendakari Íñigo Urkullu and members of the Spanish Parliament
such as Gabriel Rufián and Joan Tardà. Instead, the Court has refused to accept
as witnesses the King (because it is prohibited by the Law of Criminal
Procedure), Puigdemont and others of the accused who were declared in absentia
in the same case.
11. What are the phases of the trial?
The oral hearing will have four phases: the one of
previous questions, the one of evidences, the one of conclusions and the one of
report. At the beginning of the trial, the parties may present to the court
what they deem appropriate, such as the violation of a fundamental right, and
the magistrates may resolve them or defer the decision until the sentence. In
the second stage, the statements of the accused, the witnesses and the experts,
and the presentation of the documentary evidence will take place. Then the
parties in the case will issue their final conclusions, in which they will
indicate the facts that have been committed, the crimes that are considered
applicable and the penalties to be imposed for them.
Finally, the parties will present their arguments
to the court in the following order: public prosecutors, lawyers for the
accusations and attorneys for the defendants. And finally, the defendants will
have the right to the last word to say what they consider convenient. The trial
will end and will be ready for sentencing.
12. When will the sentence be known?
So far the intention of the Supreme Court is that
the oral hearing would end in early May so that the sessions do not overlap
with the municipal and autonomous elections of May 26. The magistrates estimate
that the sentence will be ready before August, a non-working month for the high
court.
How did everything get here?
The public prosecutors set the beginning of the
Catalan independence challenge in September 2012, when the then president of
the Generalitat, Artur Mas (Convergència), asked the Government of Mariano
Rajoy (PP) for a "fiscal pact", that is, a financing model for
Catalonia better than the rest of the communities of the common system. Rajoy
said no. A week later Mas dissolved the Parliament and called a snap election. Two days later, on September 27, 2012, the Catalan Parliament agreed, at
the request of the president, to hold a self-determination consultation in the
following legislature that would not be binding.
This consultation was held on November 9, 2014. The
Government assured that it would not intervene to avoid voting if it was a civic exercise of “freedom of expression”. 2.3 million people (one third of those who had the
right to vote) went to the ballot boxes and won the independence vote with
80.7%. Mas announced a new snap election for September 27, 2015, in which Convergència
and ERC would joint for the first time together in a single list, Junts pel Sí,
and would focus the campaign on the independence aspiration.
One year later, they obtained 47.8% of the votes and an absolute majority of
the seats. On November 9, 2015, the Parliament approved a text that declared
the "beginning of the process of creation of the independent Catalan
State". In response, the Government of Rajoy approved, with only the votes
of PP, a legal
reform that gave the
Constitutional Court the power to disqualify public officials. The Court warned
the Parliament that any initiative linked to the November resolution was
illegal, and warned them of criminal consequences. Forcadell, the pro-independence
members of Parliament and the Govern - already presided over by Carles
Puigdemont, after forcing the CUP the resignation of Mas - ignored those
warnings and approved resolutions referred to a new referendum.
In March 2017, the Parliament allocated a budget
item for the consultation, despite the warnings from the legal advisors of the
Parliament. Puigdemont set a date to hold the referendum in June, and in September
the parliamentary majority of Junts pel Sí and the CUP approved the Law of Legal Transition to the Republic to activate the breakup with the rest of Spain in
24 hours and without a parliamentary debate when the consultation would be
called. The Constitutional Court suspended it 14 days later, but the
consultation was held anyway on October 1, 2017.
0 comentarios:
Post a Comment