LAWYERS representing the jailed former speaker of the Catalan parliament are to use legal arguments from Scotland, Germany and Belgium when they raise her case with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
Carme Forcadell has been in prison for a year for allowing a debate and a vote on an independence referendum in the parliament.
However, her legal team say her continued internment is a violation of her fundamental rights.
Olga Arderiu and Jássica Simor told the VilaWeb news portal that they took the decision to go to the ECHR after Spain’s constitutional court (TC) rejected an appeal against judge Pablo Llarena’s decision to keep her in jail indefinitely.
Simor said the deprivation of Forcadell’s freedom was extraordinary: “She is jailed for allowing a debate and a motion to parliament to be voted on.”
One of the arguments the lawyers will use will follow the Scottish, German and Belgian courts, which dismissed Llarena’s attempts to extradite for rebellion St Andrews University academic and former Catalan education minister professor Clara Ponsati and former president Carles Puigdemont.
Belgian justice rejected the measure against three other former ministers, Toni Comín, Meritxell Serret and Lluís Puig, but the Scottish courts also ruled out a “precautionary measure” of preventative detention which the TC has applied to Forcadell’s case.
Simor said the team had to decide if it would be more convenient to appeal to the Strasbourg Court or wait for the TC judgments in the trials of all nine political prisoners who are also imprisoned. However, he also commented: “But it may take a long time until it does not happen, and we do not even know when the trial will begin.”
He said he was confident they can win in the ECHR given the strength of their arguments and despite the complications of the court.
Simor said the appeal in Strasbourg would not affect later cases: “They are separate questions, and we still do not know what will happen.”
He added that there was a downside – the slow speed at which the ECHR processes caases, with one such as this potentially lasting for up to three years.
It would also depend on what priority it was given by the judges, but he said the team was considering whether they could try to persuade judges to release Forcadell provisionally while they deliberate on the merits of the case.
The Catalan parliament, meanwhile, is to vote to reject a resolution from the TC ordering that Puigdemont and other members of parliament facing rebellion charges be suspended.
Pro-independence parties yesterday tabled a motion against suspension of the six and designating party colleagues to vote on their behalf.
The motion is likely to be approved with support from Catalunya En Comú-Podem (CatECP), a left-wing coalition which is non-aligned on independence.
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