The Minister of Justice, Félix Bolaños, denied this Friday that the amnesty law is being made with an “urgent procedure”, one of the objections that the Venice Commission raised to the text in the draft opinion released last week. Although this is the type of procedure that the PSOE and its partners have chosen for the bill, which shortens the debate and avoids the reports of the advisory bodies, Bolaños has assured that, “in practice”, it has not been followed this procedure. “It was registered in November and still has at least another two months of processing in the Senate. And then, when he returns to Congress. Therefore, it will take almost six months to process, which is more than ordinary time,” the minister said in an interview on Cadena SER, in which he placed the final approval of the bill in the second half of May. norm in Congress.
Since the preliminary report of the Venice Commission, a consultative body of the Council of Europe, became known, the Government has brandished this text as a resounding endorsement of the measure of grace for those accused of the process. The draft opinion supported the objective of “political reconciliation” with which the PSOE presents the law, and proposed some changes that have been incorporated into the text agreed upon by the socialists and their partners. But the report also warned that the emergency procedure “is not appropriate” for an amnesty law, which should promote “inclusion, participation, an appropriate calendar and public discussions,” a recommendation that the promoters of the pardon measure did not. have attended.
“What worried the Venice Commission is that this [la tramitación urgente] prevent the debate on amnesty. There has been quite a debate. There have been people who have spoken out regarding the law when not a single line was known. They have given their opinion on a blank sheet of paper. And then the text was known and we have continued debating,” stressed the minister, who did highlight the support of the Venice Commission for other aspects of the norm.
In another interview, in La Sexta, Bolaños has avoided answering the question of whether he believes that the text agreed with ERC and Junts guarantees that Carles Puigdemont will be able to receive amnesty. “The law is not regarding individual people. It benefits people who have causes, but above all it is a law that is aimed at Catalan society to definitively sow harmony,” he said. And, without citing the leader of Junts by name, he added that “in the specific case of this person, like any other”, the intention of the parliamentary groups that have agreed on the text is for all those accused to be included in the amnesty. .
This approach is set out in the preamble of the law, which expressly states that the objective is to cover “all people, without exception, who participated in the independence process.” However, legal sources maintain that the changes introduced in the crime of terrorism – which involve leaving out of the grace measure only those acts that can be classified as terrorism according to the 2017 European directive and in turn have “intentionally” caused serious human rights violations—do not guarantee amnesty for Puigdemont in the Democratic Tsunami case.
These sources also warn that the modification introduced in the crime of embezzlement – which affects a good part of those prosecuted for the independence challenge, including the former Catalan president and the rest of the leaders prosecuted by the Supreme Court – may complicate the granting of forgiveness. This amendment, which was introduced to dispel the doubts raised by the Venice Commission regarding the decision to amnesty crimes of embezzlement, establishes that acts classified as such will be amnestied “when no personal benefit of a financial nature has occurred.” But the sources consulted indicate that the existence of patrimonial enrichment might be established if it is understood that the defendants have paid for elements with public funds (such as the foreign promotion of the process or the organization of the illegal 1-O referendum) that they had to pay for out of their own pockets because it benefited them personally.
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