The former Minister of the Interior of the Generalitat Miquel Buch has become this Tuesday the first beneficiary of the amnesty law. The Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) has applied the pardon measure to the leader of Junts, who had been sentenced to four and a half years in prison and 20 years of disqualification for the crimes of embezzlement and prevarication. In 2018, Buch hired a mosso d’esquadra to act as an escort for Carles Puigdemont in Belgium, where the former president of the Generalitat was on the run from Spanish justice. The agent, Lluís Escolà (sentenced to another four years in prison), has also been amnestied. Throughout the day, other decisions in the same direction have been known, all of them regarding people convicted of riots during the processeswith which the number of people benefiting from the amnesty now exceeds fifteen.
In its resolution, the TSJC agrees to “declare the extinction of the criminal and civil liability” of Buch and Escolà “as the acts” for which they were convicted are amnestied. Also in accordance with the amnesty law, the court annuls the “personal or property” precautionary measures that have been adopted throughout the procedure and orders that “any records, annotations and antecedents, including police records, have been cancelled.” carried out exclusively by virtue of the acts expressly amnestied.”
The decision of the Catalan justice system has been adopted by judges Àngels Vivas, Francisco Segura, María Jesús Manzano and Manuel Álvarez in the process of reviewing the sentence that, in September 2023, was handed down by the Barcelona Court and which was appealed by the accused. On June 13, two days after the amnesty law came into force with its publication in the BOE, the magistrates informed the parties to give their opinion on whether the acts committed by Buch and Escolà – who had not even entered prison, as the sentence was not final—were susceptible to amnesty. And they called a deliberation session that they held this Tuesday. The decision, which represents the first effective application of the amnesty law, was announced around 3:00 p.m.
The ruling of the civil and criminal chamber of the TSJC accepts the “proven facts” in the initial conviction as good. During the summer of 2018, the Department of the Interior of the Generalitat (led by Buch) signed Lluís Escolà, a middle manager of the Mossos who had worked for many years in the police escort service, as a supposed security advisor. autonomous. At the trial, the former counselor defended the reports prepared by Escolà and his value as a collaborator. But the judges agreed with the Prosecutor’s Office and concluded that that job was a cover: the real purpose of hiring him was to pay for the services that the sergeant provided, unofficially, as Puigdemont’s escort in Waterloo (Belgium). Escolà carried out “other functions for which, formally, he had been designated,” concluded the ruling, which remains valid in its terms but not in its consequences.
The magistrates break down the content of the amnesty law and conclude that the crime of embezzlement falls under the umbrella of the law as long as the acts are intended to “finance, defray or facilitate” any conduct linked to the processes and there has been no personal enrichment, understood as “personal benefit of a patrimonial nature.” In the case of Buch and Escolà, the embezzled money was intended not for their private pockets but for purposes linked to the independence process, the court understands, which is why the grace measure should be applied. “Another interpretation would leave the amnesty without content,” they write. The judges declare the criminal and civil responsibilities of the two accused extinguished. And they remember that the resolution can be appealed in cassation before the Supreme Court.
Amnestied for public disorder
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Shortly after announcing the decision on Buch, the same TSJC magistrates have granted amnesty to three other people: Amadeu B., Marc R. and Marc V., three young people convicted for their participation in riots in 2020. The law of amnesty – a demand from Junts and ERC to support the investiture of Pedro Sánchez – was agreed and approved with political leaders such as the former Minister of the Interior in mind, but also in anonymous citizens who participated in the mobilizations throughout the year. processes; especially, in the protests of October 2019 against the Supreme Court ruling that sentenced nine pro-independence leaders to sentences of between 9 and 13 years in prison. Some of these people were immersed in legal proceedings. Like the three young people now amnestied, who were sentenced to three years in prison as perpetrators of a crime of attacking law enforcement officers with the use of a dangerous instrument.
The resolution issued this Tuesday by the TSJC concludes that the acts they committed are susceptible to amnesty. The accused “threw stones at a police vehicle” and did so “during a rally called by the Catalan National Assembly (ANC) and Òmnium Cultural on the third anniversary of the 1-O referendum”, that is, on 1 October 2020. These acts fit with the assumptions provided for by the law, which is why the court declares the criminal and civil responsibilities of the three young people extinguished. With a nuance: in the case of Marc R., who was sentenced to six additional months in prison for injuries, the court maintains civil liability and, therefore, the “consequences” of financially compensating the Mossos agent who was injured. . The amnesty for the three young people, as established by law, annuls the personal and property measures and orders the cancellation of records.
Throughout this Tuesday, four resolutions have been known, all of them from the TSJC, that apply the amnesty to other people convicted in the first instance, almost all of them for crimes such as public disorder and attacks on law enforcement agents. This is the case of Francesc C. and Oleksandr S., who participated in riots in Plaza Urquinaona in Barcelona in October 2019. Oleksandr was sentenced for attacking authority and causing injuries to a total of seven and a half years in prison, the sentence highest of those recorded by the protests of the processes.
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