The judge revokes the semi-freedom of Junqueras and six other prisoners of the 'procés'

A penitential surveillance judge has revoked the third degree that the Generalitat granted in January to seven of the prisoners of the

: the former Catalan vice president Oriol Junqueras;

former directors Jordi Turull, Josep Rull, Raül Romeva and Joaquim Forn;

and the leaders of the ANC and Òmnium social entities, Jordi Sànchez and Jordi Cuixart.

As they have explained themselves on Twitter and judicial sources have confirmed, the head of the prison surveillance court number 5 of Catalonia has estimated the resources of the public prosecutor's office and has overthrown the semi-release regime of the seven Lledoners prisoners, who throughout this Tuesday they must return to prison to return to second grade.

The Supreme Court revoked, last December, a first semi-release regime granted by the Generalitat.

He did so on the grounds that the measure was "premature."

The court that tried the independence leaders considered that the sentences were too high (between 9 and 13 years in prison) to agree on a measure that allows them to spend the day in freedom and return to prison only to sleep.

But the Catalan Government did not take for granted.

Just a month later, he agreed again - after obtaining the favorable report of the treatment boards - the third degree.

The Prosecutor's Office, annoyed by the insistence of the regional executive despite what the Supreme Court said, appealed.

He asked the surveillance judge for the immediate suspension of the appeal, before even entering to assess the merits of the matter.

The judge rejected that request and the Prosecutor's Office then sought protection from the Supreme Court, which was to issue a decision shortly.

It will not be necessary.

The surveillance judge has made progress and has already begun to assess the substance of the matter.

The judge's records, released by the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC), largely reflect the arguments put forward by the Supreme Court.

Almost everything in the text and in the spirit of the judicial decision refers, in fact, to the Supreme Court.

The magistrate agrees that the decision to transfer the prisoners to the third degree continues to be "hasty" and "premature" and that the advance towards semi-release is "incompatible" with the fulfillment of the purpose of "prevention" of the sentence imposed.

Darts against the Generalitat

The revocation of the third degree is accompanied by harsh reproaches to the Generalitat, which has the powers in penitentiary matters.

It is true, the order concedes, that the administration must review the inmates' situation every six months.

But the approval of a third degree so prematurely "translates,

into a way of altering the conviction of the sentence and its effective compliance."

Furthermore, the Department of Justice has not “adequately explained the progression experienced” by the inmates that make him worthy of a new third degree.

"Sufficient time must elapse for the prison treatment to produce its effects, which is understood to have not happened," insists the judge, following the line drawn by the Supreme Court.

The order accuses the Catalan Government that, contrary to its way of proceeding in the case of other inmates, it has granted the prisoners of the

without them having “assumed the crime” committed.

“It draws powerfully attention,” says the order, that this is a decisive factor in other cases but that this is not the case with the pro-independence leaders imprisoned for the events that occurred in autumn 2017. “As inferred from the reports of the junta [ of treatment] that support the resolution, all the facts appear contextualized, minimized or justified ”.

The responsibility to which they allude is only "political" or "moral", but "there is no glimpse of a minimum assumption of criminal responsibility in the sense of having broken basic norms of coexistence".

In its appeal, the Prosecutor's Office had underlined the fact that the Generalitat has granted the third degree at the same time to all the pro-independence leaders.

The judge also picks up this argument: "It is striking that the procedural and regimental journey of the nine convicted by the same procedure run administratively in such a parallel way."