En español
En español: Supreme Court revokes open prison regime granted to jailed Catalan separatist leaders
Oriol Junqueras and the rest of the
procés
prisoners
will continue to be imprisoned without enjoying the semi-freedom they enjoyed for a few weeks last summer.
The Supreme Court has revoked the third degree that the Generalitat granted to the pro-independence leaders convicted of sedition and that was temporarily suspended in almost all cases pending the decision of the high court.
The magistrates who judged the
procés
They consider it “premature” for prisoners to already enjoy the third degree and emphasize that a longer period of time must elapse to evaluate the evolution of the inmate and the prison treatment, especially when it comes to high sentences (from 9 to 13 years in prison ) of which none have completed half, and most have not even a quarter.
The court has also annulled the other avenue opened by the Generalitat to make compliance more flexible for the nine prisoners: the application of article 100.2 of the penitentiary regulations, which allowed them to leave prison daily to work, volunteer or take care of family members .
In its resolutions, the court sees an attempt by the Generalitat to give the independence leaders a "privileged prison treatment."
The future prison of the nine prisoners is in the hands of the Supreme Court while the Government processes the pardon and debates the reform of the crime of sedition.
Judicial Resolution
Consult the order that revokes the third degree to Oriol Junqueras
The agreement adopted by the Supreme Court only has practical consequences for the former president of the Parliament Carme Forcadell (sentenced to 11 and a half years for sedition) and the former councilor Dolors Bassa (12 years for sedition and embezzlement).
They were the only ones who benefited from the discrepancies of criteria existing between the prison surveillance courts on whether the third degree of the prisoners of the
procés
should be suspended until the Supreme Court confirmed or annulled the semi-release.
Both have continued to go to jail only to sleep from Monday to Thursday and spending weekends at home, while the seven male prisoners, whose jail depends on another court, returned to the ordinary prison regime at the end of July.
Forcadell and Bassa will now lose that semi-freedom.
The Supreme Court's decision on the third degree has been made by the same judges who tried and sentenced the case, with the exception of magistrate Luciano Varela, now retired.
The court has been made up of the president of the Criminal Chamber, Manuel Marchena, who has served as speaker, and justices Antonio del Moral, Ana Ferrer, Andrés Martínez Arrieta, Juan Ramón Berdugo and Andrés Palomo del Arco.
In the nine cars notified this Friday, of similar content, the magistrates explain that the granting of the third degree to an inmate who has not served a quarter of the sentence (which is the case of all of them except Jordi Cuixart, Jordi Sánchez and Joaquim Forn, who have also not served half) is exceptional and requires “a reinforced justification, logically, with respect to that required in the cases in which an inmate who has already served a quarter of the sentence is proposed for the third degree ”.
However, according to the Supreme Court, the Generalitat, which granted the semi-release, and the two Penitentiary Surveillance judges who endorsed it, not only have not given arguments to justify the granting of this measure, but have linked the imprisonment of the independence leaders with his political ideas, an interpretation that the magistrates censure.
“The court of instance errs by hinting that the estimation of the appeal by the Public Prosecutor would imply requiring the inmate to modify his ideology.
Mr. Junqueras was not condemned for his independence ideology.
He was declared the author of a crime of sedition in competition with a crime of embezzlement of public funds in its aggravated modality, based on the facts declared proven in the historical trial of our sentence, "warn the magistrates in the order referred to the former vice president of the Generalitat.
"No one is serving a sentence in a penitentiary for their political ideas," they add.
The court also questions what it considers to be a "distance" between some of the decisions adopted by the Catalan prison administration and what, according to the magistrates, should be the "proper performance of their duties".
“The principle of flexibility (…), so important to make the constitutional goal of resocialization of the convicted person a reality, does not turn the Treatment Boards into a last instance called upon to correct the disagreements of the officials that integrate them with the outcome of a certain process (…).
Nor does it allow the unjustified transfer of a prisoner to another penitentiary if that decision is strategically aimed at rectifying the competence of the Penitentiary Surveillance Judge, set in light of the territorial area in which the prison is located, ”the judges point out, in relation to the change of prison of the former president of the Parliament Carme Forcadell, who thus tried to avoid the decision of the Lleida Penitentiary Surveillance judge, which corresponded to the prison in which Forcadell began to serve the sentence, for the Supreme Court to rule on the application of article 100.2.
A "privileged treatment"
The chamber warns the Generalitat that "the penitentiary administration cannot distance itself from the principles and guarantees that inform the execution of the prison sentences imposed by the courts."
“Their compliance with the law should not be made to depend on their degree of identification or disagreement with the legal arguments on which the conviction is based.
Otherwise, the role that the law reserves to the administrative bodies is subverted, which, in this way, become an extravagant third instance that assumes the task of making the decision emanating from the judges and courts constitutionally called to exercise more just of the jurisdictional function ”.
"The organs of the penitentiary administration can not empty the criminal response proclaimed by a court of justice," says the Supreme Court, who considers that his sentence on the
process
has been subjected to a "rereading that disguises a privileged prison treatment" and, precisely therefore, "inappropriate".
The Supreme Court defends in the nine cars the sentence by which it condemned the independence leaders and responds to one of the usual criticisms that it has received from the independence movement since the criminal process against the Government of Carles Puigdemont began: that the high court it does not punish acts but political ideas.
"It is not intended that the inmate 'renounces his political convictions', simply because these are alien to his conviction," warns the court, for which to argue otherwise implies "clinging to a wrong line of argument, which has nothing to do with the meaning of serving a custodial sentence in a democratic society ”.
In the order referring to Junqueras, the court recalls that the convicted politicians "dynamited the bases of coexistence promoting a tumultuous uprising in order to demonstrate that the resolutions of the Constitutional Court and the judges based in Catalonia were no longer enforceable."
Nor can the two jailed civil leaders claim the criminalization of their ideas, says the court, which in the writings on Sànchez and Cuixart goes on to recall why it condemned them for sedition.
“The breaking of the rules that define the normal functioning of any rule of law and the promotion of violent incidents called to demonstrate that the jurisdiction of the ordinary Courts and Tribunals had to stop at the gates of a regional council, are the reasons that are on the basis of the conviction, ”he explains in the car about the former leader of the ANC.
In order to justify the annulment of the regime of application of Article 100.2 of the Penitentiary Regulations, the court explains that there has been no “connection whatsoever” between this flexibility in serving the sentence and the process of social reintegration of the convicted persons.
"This lack of connection between the treatment program and the crimes committed makes a semi-release regime unjustifiable," argue the magistrates, who assure that they do not question the good behavior of the prisoners, their cooperative attitude with the team and their involvement in de the different activities, some of the reasons used by Catalan prisons to justify this measure.
Nor do they question their academic and professional career prior to committing the crimes for which they have been convicted.
“But, as we already warned at the time when we rejected the application of this same regime with respect to Mrs. Forcadell and other convicted persons in this special case, none of this allows us to save the absolute absence of a link between the proposed program and the process of social reintegration of the convicted person who, obviously, cannot be oblivious to the crimes committed, a crime of sedition and a crime of embezzlement of public funds in its aggravated modality ”, they conclude.
Consult the order of the Supreme that revokes the third degree to Oriol Junqueras.
If you can't see it, click here.