The judge of the National Court Manuel García-Castellón has once again bumped into Switzerland in the case investigating the riots in Catalonia in October 2019 as a response to the ruling of the process led by the Democratic Tsunami platform. The Swiss Federal Office of Justice has doubts about whether to hand over a series of information that the instructor has demanded to advance a case that may be overturned after the passage of the Amnesty law.
The magistrate had asked the Swiss authorities to help him locate the general secretary of ERC, Marta Rovira, and to analyze her bank accounts in Switzerland, where he has lived since 2018, after he officially opened a criminal case against him for a crime of terrorism.
Switzerland wants to have the most clear information before providing the data once the same magistrate already tried to obtain similar information in 2019 and was refused. To begin with, the Swiss Federal Office of Justice wants to know exactly why the magistrate wants to know the location of Rovira, why police assistance has not been requested for this and whether the cause has a “political character that would prevent us from granting assistance under Swiss legislation on mutual assistance in criminal matters”.
The judge made the new claim after receiving a report from the Civil Guard in November in which Rovira was positioned as the “political coordinator” of Democratic Tsunami. The progress of the investigation, opened in 2019, coincided with the negotiations to approve an amnesty.
For this reason, Switzerland asks about the political aspects of the cause, in addition to wanting to know the scope of the amnesty in the Democratic Tsunami cause. In response to the rogatory commission raised by García-Castellón, the Swiss authorities argue that they have learned from the press that an amnesty law was being prepared in Spain for several Catalan separatists. “We would appreciate it if your ministry or the central court of inquiry number 6 would provide us with more information on the matter. It would be convenient, among other issues, for them to explain to us the possible consequences of this law on the proceedings started against the members of the Tsunami Democràtic platform, as well as against Rovira, whose membership in the mentioned platform is not clear”, it states the document advanced by El País and also accessed by La Vanguardia.
Regarding the magistrate’s interest in Rovira’s bank data, the Swiss want to know why movements are requested on the account in question until June 2020, “as the events organized at the airports of Barcelona and Madrid that supposedly should have received financial support through the aforementioned account had taken place on October 14, 2019”.
Nor is it clear to them the relationship of the pro-independence leader with Democratic Tsunami. For all this, they request additional information from the National Court before providing the judge with what he asks for.
Some legal sources explain that without the approved Amnesty law it is difficult to know the scope it may have and whether it will affect the cause. The proposed law presented by the PSOE has encountered a parliamentary hurdle in the face of Junts’ refusal to approve it in plenary on the understanding that the amnesty should be more extensive.
In fact, one of the points in which it has been stuck is in what could affect the cause of the Democratic Tsunami for the crime of terrorism. The socialists have refused to grant an unlimited amnesty to the causes of terrorism linked to the process. However, the party led by Carles Puigdemont suspects that, if the law is approved as the text is now proposed, García-Castellón could pursue a criminal case against the former president of the Generalitat and, in this way, avoid that he could be amnestied.
