Former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont returned to his residence in Waterloo (Belgium), after arriving in Barcelona last Tuesday, where he participated in an event with his followers on Thursday, and evaded the police operation that was supposed to arrest him, a series of events that went as he had previously “planned.”
Speaking to RAC1 radio, the secretary general of the pro-independence party Junts per Catalunya, Jordi Turull, explained that he had “had dinner” with the leader of his party in Barcelona, and said that Puigdemont arrived incognito to the Catalan capital at least two days before the event that took place this Thursday in the city centre, after seven years on the run from Spanish justice.
Gonzalo Boye, the lawyer of the former Catalan president, said on Friday that “everything happened” as Puigdemont “had previously planned”: “He did not come to surrender, he came to fight,” he said in statements to Catalan radio stations, referring to his participation and subsequent escape despite the police operation.
According to Boye, Puigdemont is expected to address his supporters again between today and tomorrow. The lawyer said that the former president “has always been at the disposal of justice,” but that “he is being pursued for acts that are amnestied by a law that a judge does not want to apply.” In that sense, he welcomed the fact that he is “free,” and believed that the amnesty will be applied to him “sooner rather than later.”
The Supreme Court asks the Mossos for explanations for Puigdemont’s escape
The former Catalan president has a national arrest warrant in force from the Spanish Supreme Court, which refused to grant him amnesty for the crime of embezzlement of expenses for the 2017 referendum.
The Spanish Minister of Justice, Félix Bolaños, said on Friday that yesterday’s police operation was the “responsibility” of the Catalan police, the security force “competent” to guarantee the normality of the plenary session as well as compliance with “the mandates that the Supreme Court had made, because they are and act as judicial police,” he said in a statement from Paris.
The minister considered that the former Catalan president’s visit to Barcelona was “an episode that can contribute nothing to Catalan society.”
For his part, Supreme Court judge Pablo Llarena requested separate reports from the Catalan police and the Spanish Interior Ministry on the police operation planned to arrest Puigdemont yesterday in Barcelona and “on the elements that determined its failure.”
Llarena, who confirmed the validity of the arrest warrant, now wants to know what the approved and deployed police operation was, who were the agents responsible for its design, approval and execution and what were the reasons for its “failure”, “from a technical police perspective.”
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2024-08-29 11:57:14
