The Constitutional Court of Belgium has ruled this Thursday on the case of rapper Josep Miquel Arenas, alias Valtònyc, and incidentally an old Belgian law of 1847 on insults to the crown has been carried forward. The decision of the highest interpreter of the country’s constitution also removes the possibility that the musician, convicted in Spain, is extradited to his country. It will now be the Ghent Court of Appeal, which raised the query on the case, which will have to decide on the Euro order that weighs on Valtònyc.
The musician escaped from Spain in 2018 hiding in the trunk of a car, after being sentenced by the National Court for glorifying terrorism, insults to the crown and threats included in the lyrics of his songs. He settled in Belgium and in this country he is part of the independence circle of the former president of the Generalitat, Carles Puigdemont. It is not uncommon to see him in the so-called House of the Republic in Waterloo, doing technical work.
In the first instance, the Ghent court in charge of reviewing his case found that his creations were protected by freedom of expression and rejected his extradition. The court of appeal, on the other hand, wanted to consult whether or not offenses to the King fall within the freedom of expression in Belgium, so it chose to raise a preliminary question. The defense of Arenas, the same one that represents Puigdemont and the rest of the independence politicians claimed by Spain, believed that the nineteenth-century law that punished the injuries to the Belgian king and royal family would have been invalidated under the magnifying glass of the current fundamental rule of the country . And that is how the Constitutional Court has considered it.
In the opinion of this court, the Belgian law on crimes against the crown of 1847 is incompatible with the protection of freedom of expression. “It does not satisfy an urgent social need and is disproportionate with the objective of protecting the reputation of the person of the king,” says the ruling of the Constitutional Court.
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