A SCOTS lawyer has said he expects new international arrest warrants to be issued for exiled former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont and two of his ministers – Clara Ponsati and Tony Comin – when the verdicts in the Catalan independence trial are delivered tomorrow.
Aamer Anwar represents former Catalan education minister Clara Ponsati, and earlier saw Spain withdraw its European arrest warrant for her after courts here, and in Belgium and Germany, questioned the charge of rebellion that Spain had cited in their cases.
That ruling left Ponsati, Puigdemont and Comin free to travel anywhere in Europe, except Spain.
However, Anwar said tomorrow’s verdicts could herald a new set of warrants, this time on charges relating to alleged terrorism.
He told the Sunday National the trio were earlier accused of not following due process as Spanish authorities sought to “tick boxes” to justify their extradition and imprisonment.
He said: “They were accused on the last occasion of acting out of political vengeance. Having watched the trial over the course of six months or so, that’s exactly what they are still accused of.
“No matter what they try it’ll be extremely difficult for them to try to seek extradition, whether it be in Belgium or Scotland.
“On the last occasion we obviously had to speculate and say if Clara was returned she wouldn’t receive due process, she wouldn’t have the right to a fair trial, that this was a political prosecution, but the difficulty that arose from that was that we had to speculate and say this was what would happen if she went to trial.
“We’ve now got absolute evidence of why we believe the due process was not carried out. The lawyers, in discussions that we’ve had with them, are already preparing appeals to take this to the European courts.”
READ MORE: Catalonia's independence trial will come to an end tomorrow
The lawyer said for Spain, the genie was now out of the bottle, and the question was how they would handle it.
“Previously they had Rajoy and then Pedro Sanchez, the so-called knight in shining armour, the socialist who wanted a political solution rather than a judicial one,” said Anwar.
“He seems to have done the exact opposite. He’s done nothing about trying to ensure a political solution. The fact that he’s talking about exhuming Franco’s remains means absolutely nothing and the ghost of Franco seems to be dictating every tune that he jumps to – like talking about Article 155 [imposition of Spanish rule] in Catalonia. It’s almost as if they are deliberately trying to provoke reactions and I think the most dangerous part has been the attempt to draw in claims of terrorism to try to link the exiles to these charges, because I suspect that if they do that they would say it should be an automatic extradition.”
He added: “What is ridiculous about the whole situation is the desperation they seem to be wrapped up in because the idea that they will now try to accuse the independence movement of being involved in terrorism is farcical.
“There hasn’t been one act of violence that they have been able to show that any of these individuals have been involved in.”
READ MORE: Catalan independence: Tension as leaders await trial verdicts
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