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INPRIMATU
Supreme disregards Amnesty Law and maintains arrest warrant against Puigdemont
  • The Supreme Court has rejected the application of the Amnesty Law to those convicted of misappropriation of public funds in the 1-O court case in relation to the 2017 referendum. In addition to Puigdemont, the ruling of the Supreme also affects Junqeras, Romeva, Bassa and Turull.
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The judicial offensive does not cease in Catalonia, because Spanish justice continues to hit the last remnants of the independence process, above what the legislative and executive powers recognize. The Congress of Deputies passed the Amnesty Act on 30 May, so the magistrates have a period of approximately two months from its entry into force to adopt the Amnesty Act and review the pending cases. In other words, according to the legislature and the executive, the adoption of the Amnesty Act should lead to the closure of these cases, but the judiciary is obviously making its way.

Several persons were convicted by the Supreme Court for misappropriation of public funds for the Procés. Carles Puigdemont, Toni Comín and Lluís Puig will continue with the arrest warrant and Oriol Junqueras, Raül Romeva, Dolors Bassa and Jordi Turull will continue with the penalties of disqualification until 2031. On the contrary, the decision is in favour of the ERC Secretary General in exile, Marta Rovira, on whom the arrest warrant is lifted.

The text of the Amnesty Law has been adopted by the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme and by the examining magistrate of the Procés, and both have agreed that the text of the Amnesty Law does not explain whether this is a matter of misappropriation of public money, so that the law cannot be applied to some politicians. The Supreme Court therefore closes the door for direct entry into Europe, for which it is the Constitutional Court that has to move the file.

The leaders of the Spanish pp have been proud of the decision of the Supreme: "Sanchez has used the majority to make a law he hasn't even been able to do well," he added.

Two infinite questions

Most of them talk about the cause of the offense, especially the case of Puigdemont, but even if the Spanish Supreme Court annulled the arrest warrant against Puigdemont for misappropriation of public funds, Puigdemont could not enter Spanish territory so easily. In fact, the case of Tsunami, which has spent four years under a summary, remains unresolved and is now charged with terrorist offences.

The implementation of the Amnesty Act is gradually being known by the Supreme. For the time being, the cases reported are those referring to the procés case, which have not reached the Tsunami.

A number of people have been exiled in Geneva (Switzerland) in the last ten months by the Tsunami case, seeing that the case against them was being strengthened, not by chance, precisely when the negotiation of the Amnesty Act was being formed and symbolised that the possible return of Puidgemont might be close. From that moment on, the National Court sought a way of imputing terrorist crimes to those charged in the case of the Tsunami, and the Supreme purchased arguments that were at the top of the Democratic Tsunami in the fall of 2019, after the procés, after the referendum in 2017, made themselves known in the fall of 2019.

ARGIA interviewed exiles Jesús Rodríguez and Ruben Wagensberg in Switzerland on the eve of the adoption of the Amnesty Law. They denounced that the National High Court "intentionally" removed from below the table the mantra of the crime of terrorism, if the Amnesty Law included procecal independentists, so that the Tsunami case would punish the leaders of at least two of the major independence parties, Carles Puigdemont and Marta Rovira.