The High Court judge, who is leading the investigation into him Carles Puigdemontformally demanded an explanation today from Catalan police and the Spanish Foreign Ministry for the separatist leader’s escape on Thursday after his brief reappearance in Barcelona.
Judge Pablo Jarena, who issued the arrest warrant against Carles Puigdemontis seeking an explanation of the police force “authorized and deployed” in Barcelona in order to understand its “failure,” according to court documents released Friday.
From the Ministry of the Interior, the judge is asking for information about means that had been deployed “to locate him at the border and take him into custody”, as well as about the orders that had been given to arrest him “after he fled”.
From the Catalan police -Mossos d’esquadra- the judge asks for the names of “those who conceived the idea of the operation, those charged with its approval and those charged with its implementation or operational development”.
The government’s response
Being in Paris for the Olympics, the Spanish Interior Minister assured for his part that the operation to arrest the separatist leader “was the responsibility of the Mossos” which “is the competent police force (…) to implement the court orders”.
“In government, what we do and what we guarantee is that Spain is a rule of law, where the law is applied and where court orders must be respected,” he told reporters.
What Puigdemont’s lawyer says
Meanwhile, a lawyer for the separatist leader told a Catalan radio station that his client is “outside” Spain after his latest escape.
“Puigdemont is out of it [ισπανικού] state” (as the Catalan nationalists call Spain), Gondalo Boge told Rac1, without elaborating further.
On Thursday night, he had declared on Catalan public television that Puigdemont had “returned home”, after his short speech near the Catalan parliament. Where the meeting for the swearing in of the new president of the Catalan region was then held.
Where is Puigdemont anyway?
For his part, the general secretary of Puigdemont’s party, Junts per Catalunya (“Together for Catalonia”), said today that the separatist leader has returned to Belgium.
Jordi Tourul told Rac1 that he does not know if Puigdemont has already arrived at his home in Waterloo, where he has lived since he went into self-imposed exile seven years ago.
Carles Puigdemont is “the one who must make public” where he is, his lawyer added today, assuring that his client will be given the floor “today or tomorrow”.
The chronicle
Carles Puigdemont is the subject of an arrest warrant for his role in the thwarted secession attempt of Catalonia in 2017. He has spent the past seven years outside Spain, mostly in Belgium, but also in the south of France.
A central figure in the issue of Catalan autonomy, Carles Puigdemont had announced his return to Catalonia in order to take part in the vote for the new president of the region.
He was eventually reduced to a short speech, which he delivered from a platform near parliament, in front of thousands of supporters, before discreetly disappearing, managing to elude the police force deployed to arrest him.
Despite the amnesty law negotiated by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez in exchange for the support of Carles Puigdemont’s party in his government, the latter is still wanted by Spanish justice.
The amnesty law, which has been heavily criticized by the opposition, has been at the center of several court debates since July 1. At the time, the Supreme Court ruled that it only applied to some of the offenses charged against the separatist leader.
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