SPEAKER of the Catalan parliament, Roger Torrent, is travelling to Geneva on a two-day visit to the United Nations, where he will raise the violation of political rights in Catalonia.
Torrent said his objective was to “defend the political rights of all the members and denounce the illegal interferences of the state” in the Catalan chamber.
His trip comes almost a week after Supreme Court Judge Pablo Llarena halted for the second time the investiture of jailed independence activist Jordi Sànchez, deputy head of Together for Catalonia (JxCat), as Catalan president.
Torrent said this was in contravention of a UN Human Rights Committee resolution which urged Spain to guarantee his political rights.
In its resolution on Sànchez, the committee said the state should “take the necessary measures to ensure that Jordi Sànchez can exercise his political rights”, under Article 25 of the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights.
However, Spain ignored the resolution, and described it as “non-binding”.
Meanwhile, jailed and exiled Catalan pro-independence leaders could see the charges they face reduced from rebellion to sedition to ease the extradition from Germany of deposed president Carles Puigdemont.
The Supreme Court is considering the move following a German court’s refusal to enact a European Arrest Warrant for Puigdemont. It said violence is a condition for a charge of rebellion and its German equivalent high treason, and there was no violence by him during Catalonia’s independence push.
Jaume Alonso-Cuevillas, Sànchez’s lawyer, said: “If my capacity for surprise had not already been exceeded for many months, I’d say that the today’s Supreme Court resolution is absolutely unbeatable.”
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