British lawyer to take ‘wrongly imprisoned’ Catalan leaders’ case to UN
A LEADING British human rights lawyer is to take the case of Catalonia’s jailed politicians to the UN, arguing that Spain is breaking international law by imprisoning the men over a “nonviolent political movement”.
Ben Emmerson, who has previously represented the wife of murdered Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko and the former Guantánamo detainee Moazzam Begg, announced what he called the “opening salvo” in an international campaign for the release of the three men at a London press conference yesterday.
The barrister, representing former vice-president Oriol Junqueras and the protest leaders Jordi Sanchez and Jordi Cuixart, said using rebellion and sedition charges against them was illegal.
There was nothing in the allegations against them that constituted such crimes, punishable with up to 30 years in prison, “because of the absence of violence in their conduct”, Mr Emmerson said.
“Spain is doing the very thing which is an affront to the right to organise, the right to expression and legitimate nonviolent political movements,” he added.
Mr Emmerson, himself a former UN specialist on human rights, acknowledged that the verdict from the body’s working group on arbitrary detention will not be binding, but could increase pressure on Spain over the cases and be used in future international court action – not possible until domestic legal avenues are exhausted.
Spain dropped its international arrest warrant for Carles Puigdemont, the ousted president in exile, as it became clear that Belgian judges would likely strike out at least the rebellion charge due to the absence of violence.
The Spanish government has denied claims of political interference after it emerged that ministers had personally called judges before the constitutional court and blocked a long-distance inauguration for Mr Puigdemont.
Independence parties have vowed to fight the ruling, with the Catalan parliament speaker, Roger Torrent, insisting yesterday that “no court can decide who will be the president of Catalonia”.
On Wednesday, Frans Timmermans, vice-president of the European Commission, insisted that Brussels would not be “used by people who have a domestic agenda directly a change to the constitutional order of a member state” and insisted the commission had no criticisms about the rule of law, democracy or human rights in Spain.
Mr Timmermans’s assessment followed a report from the economist intelligence unit on Wednesday warning that Spain was in danger of becoming a “flawed democracy” due to the attempt to stop the referendum “by force” and “its repressive treatment of pro-independence politicians”.