Carlota Guindal, 23 September 2021
The former president of the Generalitat Carles Puigdemont has been arrested on the island of Sardinia where he had traveled to meet with some mayors. The arrest has been by virtue of the international arrest warrant issued by the Supreme Court for the sedition cause on October 1, as confirmed by sources from the High Court to La Vanguardia.
The former president was going to attend the assembly of pro-independence mayors and councilors of Sardinia tomorrow and meet with representatives of the Sardinian parties, whom he was going to thank for their support of the right of self-determination in Catalonia.
On Puigdemont weighs a national, European and international arrest warrant agreed by the Supreme Court magistrate Pablo Llarena who instructed the case on 1-O. The Supreme Court reactivated the euro order after the ruling that condemned former vice president Oriol Junqueras and 11 other independence leaders for passing the disconnection laws and organizing the 1-O. Once reactivated, court sources explain that the Euroorder was never deactivated again despite the parliamentary immunity he obtained after winning a seat as an MEP.
Immunity was lifted by the European Parliament and the General Court of the European Union upheld the withdrawal of immunity until it resolves the appeal that Puigdemont has presented to maintain protection.
According to an official statement from his office, he has been arrested by the Italian border police upon arrival in Alghero and tomorrow he will be made available to the Sàsser court of appeal, which is competent to decide on his release or extradition to Spain.
Puigdemont left Spain just when the Prosecutor’s Office filed a complaint against the independence leaders for a crime of rebellion due to the referendum of October 1, 2017.
The sentence finally established that they had committed a crime of sedition. Since then, Puigdemont has been persecuted by the Justice. He has already been arrested in Germany, although the courts refused to hand him over to Spain for a crime of rebellion or sedition.
The former Catalan president had settled in Belgium, where his justice did not support his delivery to Spain to be tried. In the last elections to the European Parliament, Puigdemont won a seat and obtained parliamentary immunity.
However, last July the European justice left him without parliamentary immunity. Parliament had waived his immunity and although initially the EU General Court suspended the chamber’s agreement, at the end of July it reversed his previous decision. The resolution alleged that there was no risk of arrest against the former president.
After hearing the news, Puigdemont’s lawyer, Gonzalo Boye, has maintained on his Twitter account that the reason why the European justice withdrew the immunity was because the Euroorders were withdrawn. “Spain informed the General Court and this is stated in the resolution of July 30, that no country would execute an order of these characteristics; in the same resolution the vice president of the TGUE indicated that, if necessary, a new precautionary measure would be requested “, maintains the lawyer.
At the same time, Magistrate Llarena raised in March a preliminary ruling before the EU Court of Justice to take a position on Belgium’s position in the BEDs since it rejected the surrender of ex-minister Lluis Puig, in his case only prosecuted for a crime of embezzlement of public funds.
The Brussels Court of Appeal said that it was not going to hand over a citizen to be tried in the Spanish Supreme Court when this body was not competent to do so. Llarena considers that the Belgian justice has clearly overstepped when it comes to assessing which court in Spain is competent to do so and has failed to comply with the framework decision 2002/584 / JAI that establishes it.
Sources from the high court explain that the question raised does not influence the Euroorder because it only referred to clarifying a question about the decision that Belgium made with respect to another former minister, and it has nothing to do with whether the Italian courts now analyze the matter in a different way. .
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