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November 4th, 2017 
Awake Goy 
nsnbc : A Spanish judge has issued an international arrest warrant for deposed Catalan President Carles Puigdemont one day after she sent eight leading proponents for Catalonia’s independence behind bars, pending possible charges pertaining last week’s declaration of independence by the parliament of Catalonia.
Hundreds of thousands throughout Catalonia protest peacefully against Francoesque arrest warrants and jailing of politicians and independence leaders.
Continuing Madrid’s Francoesque hardliner approach to Catalonia’s apirations for greater autonomy and in the absence of Madrid’s willingness to dialog independence, the national court of Spain, on Friday, issued a European arrest warrant for the deposed Catalan President. The warrant was issued on request from state prosecutors and is widely perceived as base in politics as much as in law.
Carles Puigdemont and a group of Catalonian ministers who also had been deposed on orders from Madrid flew to the European Union capital Brussels earlier this week. The Belgian and EU capital Brussels was according to many analysts chosen for three reasons. To avoid arrest by Spanish national police; Because Brussels is the best place to be when it comes to lobbying for European support for Catalonia; And because Belgium and Belgian governments expressed sympathies and have great experience in dealing with Belgium’s own division between its Walloon and Flemish regions.
Puigdemont’s Belgian lawyer has said his client will fight extradition without seeking political asylum. Carles Puigdemont was summoned to appear at Spain’s national court on Thursday to give evidence relating to possible charges of sedition, rebellion and misuse of public funds, but failed to appear. He has said he would only return to Spain if he were offered guarantees that the judicial process he would face were fair.
Late on Friday, Puigdemont told the Belgian public TV channel RTBF that he would put his faith in the Belgian courts. “I will not flee from justice. I will go towards justice, but real justice. I’ve told my lawyers to tell the Belgian justice system that I’m completely available to cooperate,” he said. “It’s obvious it’s politicized. The guarantees are not there for a fair, independent trial,” he continued.
In an earlier interview in Brussels on Monday Puigdemont stressed that there was an “enormous influence of politics over the judiciary in Spain” and that “It’s not normal that we risk 30 years in prison, it’s extremely barbaric, we can not talk about democracy.”
Puigdemont stressed that he was ready to stand in the upcoming election in Catalonia called for by Madrid after it suspended the Catalan institutions and suspended the region’s autonomy pending elections organized under the auspices of Madris , adding: “It’s possible to run a campaign from anywhere. We consider ourselves a legitimate government.
“There must be a continuity to tell the world what’s going on in Spain … It’s not with a government in jail that the elections will be neutral, independent, normal.” In a written request to the judge, prosecutors said Puigdemont and four other members of his administration were aware they had been ordered to testify, but had chosen not to attend.
Of the nine former ministers who did appear in court in Madrid on Thursday, eight were remanded in custody. A ninth Catalan minister, Santi Vila, was released from custody on Friday after posting bail of €50,000 (£44,000). Vila, who resigned from Puigdemont’s government a day before the independence declaration, said as he left prison near Madrid: “I ask for all political parties across to Spain, appealing to their democratic values, to put an end this terrible situation that has put politicians in prison.”
The Spanish government claimed that the jailings were not politically motivated. Education Minister, Íñigo Méndez de Vigo, claimed the matter had been decided by an independent judge and the government was instead focusing on elections called by the prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, for December. “There is a separation of powers in Spain and what happened yesterday is in the realm of the justice system and beyond the reach of the government,” Méndez de Vigo said on Friday. “What the government guarantees is that there will be elections where the parties which want to run can present their programmes, and we hope that the election can end this period of uncertainty and the deterioration of harmonious coexistence in Catalonia.”
Lawyers for those under investigation said their clients would appeal against the judge’s decision, which they described as unjustified, disproportionate and predetermined. In a televised address on Thursday evening, Puigdemont had branded the detention of his colleagues a “very serious attack on democracy” and called for their immediate release. Speaking as thousands of people protested across Catalonia, he said: “Imprisoning political leaders for fulfilling an electoral commitment breaks down the basic principles of democracy.”
However, on Friday judges at the national court refused an appeal to release two grassroots pro-independence leaders who were remanded in custody last month as part of a separate investigation into alleged sedition. The jailing of Jordi Sánchez, the president of the Catalan National Assembly (ANC), and Jordi Cuixart, the president of Òmnium Cultural, brought hundreds of thousands of Catalans out on to the streets in protest. A parallel supreme court session for six parliamentary officials, including Carme Forcadell, the speaker of the regional parliament, was postponed until next week following a request from their lawyers.
F/AK – nsnbc 04.11.2017
Source Article from https://nsnbc.me/2017/11/04/catalan-puigdemont-arrest-warrant/
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