Earlier this week, the prosecutors of the Spanish Supreme Court Javier Zaragoza, Jaime Moreno, Consuelo Madrigal and Fidel Cadena informed the Supreme Court that they oppose the pardons for the pro-independence political prisoners because they do not observe reasons of “justice, equity or utility.”
The prosecutors also warned that “the enormous gravity of the facts and the proportionality of the sentences imposed must be borne in mind.” In fact, they believe that the lack of “obedience to the law” indicates that the political prisoners would commit the same crime [holding a vote: giving people the power to decide their own future through an independence referendum] again.
According to the Public Ministry, “in any case, it seems obvious that one of the minimum requirements for granting pardons is the ascertainment of a manifest acceptance of responsibility for the crime committed and the determined purpose of not reoffending as evidence of compliance with the violated legality. None of these circumstances have been proven in the present case,” concluded the prosecutor.
Having heard the position of the prosecutors, the Supreme Court must now send its report, which, like that of the prosecutors, is mandatory but not binding on the Spanish government, which has the final decision in its hands.
NOTE: The Spanish Supreme Court and the presiding body of the judiciary have leaned towards far-right positions in the last few years.
In other words, their role assumed by these prosecutors, and by extension, by the Spanish court and government, is that of psychologists, divining the *thoughts* of the leaders of Catalonia. As political prisoners, they were charged, tried, and convicted for their political opinions in the first place. Therefore, their “crime,” as it is persistently called, has always been a thought-crime, a variety of offence prosecuted only in authoritarian, non-democratic regimes.
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I disagree that they were condemned for “holding a democratic independence referendum”. That was dropped frpm the penal code in 2005!
Moreover, several members of that government were not found guilty of sedition, whatever that may mean. So it really is impossible to know what they DID that was illegal, apart from contempt of the Constitutional court.
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I believe some parts of this piece were unintentionally misleading and actually expressed the opposite I was trying to, which led to your disagreements, so amended them.
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