Spanish Supreme Court maintains rebellion charges in final report to Germany
Madrid magistrates tell counterparts not to go in depth with the accusations to Puigdemont
The Spanish Supreme Court has already sent its final report on the October 1 referendum events to the High Court of Schleswig-Holstein, in Germany, according to the Catalan newspaper La Vanguardia. The Catalan deposed president, Carles Puigdemont, is in Germany waiting for his extradition case to be decided by a German court after Spain issued a European arrest warrant for rebellion and misuse of funds and he was arrested in Schleswig-Holstein, a northerner German land.
The Spanish judges maintain in their document their accusations of rebellion and misuse of funds for the Catalan deposed president, Carles Puigdemont. What’s more, the magistrates ask their German counterparts not to go in depth with the issue and not to find equivalences between Spain’s and Germany’s penal codes, “and only assess if the events would be criminal offenses in their country.”
Rebellion not only for the referendum
According to the Spanish court, the involvement of Puigdemont “was the highest, because with his post, he was the person who had the entire responsibility about the development of the events.” For the judges in Madrid, the accusation of rebellion is not only for the October 1 events, but also for all the political process which led to that day, “with repeated disobediences to the Constitutional Court.” The judges in Schleswig-Holstein rejected the rebellion allegations on their first decision over Puigdemont’s extradition.
German request
Yet the judges did not rule out the accusations of misuse of public funds and asked the Spanish authorities for more information on this matter. Responding this request, the Spanish Supreme Court has sent another report claiming that in order to accuse someone of misuse of funds, “it is enough an agreement of the company or entity providing the service” even if the payment did not take place.
These remarks come as the postal service Unipost claimed that it did not receive any payment from the Catalan government for delivering notifications to the October 1 electoral agents because the Spanish police seized the material before being delivered in September 2017. Besides, the Spanish government has repeatedly said that no evidence of expenses for the referendum has been found.