Court keeps February 12 as independence trial start date
Judges reject calls of jailed leaders to delay it to guarantee "right to defense"
Spain's Supreme Court kept February 12 as the start date of the independence trial.
The decision, on Thursday, means rejecting the defenses' calls to delay it for up to three weeks.
The Supreme Court announced the date on February 1, with 11 days' notice, something the defendants' lawyers think is not long enough.
The lawyers of officials Oriol Junqueras, Raül Romeva, Jordi Turull, Josep Rull and Jordi Sànchez have demanded that the trial be delayed for up to three weeks, on the grounds that they needed more time to study the evidence admitted by the judge –the Supreme Court only revealed what evidence and witnesses they would admit on February 1.
For Rull, Turull and Sànchez's lawyers, this is "an obvious and effective violation of their right to a defense and their fundamental right to equality before the law."