The Minister of the Interior, Joan Ignasi Elena, asked this Tuesday by letter to the central government to urgently authorize an “adequate and dimensioned” protection service for the former president of the Generalitat Carles Puigdemont, in Belgium. A request that the Government has been demanding since 2018.
The letter has been sent to the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande Marlaska, shortly after the head of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, assured in Rac1 that the Government will process Puigdemont’s request to have escorts because “no one questions the safety of the people, no matter how many ideological differences there may be.
The head of Puigdemont’s office, Josep Lluís Alay, once again requested by letter to Minister Elena on Monday for an escort service for the former president of the Generalitat in view of the increase in “dangerousness and risk to his person” detected “for some time.” a few weeks”. The Generalitat needs the approval of the Ministry of the Interior to manage any official protection service with Mossos d’Esquadra abroad.
In this Tuesday’s letter to Marlaska, Elena requests “again” the minister to activate a protection service for Puigdemont. Police service had already been denied to both the current councilor and his predecessors Miquel Sàmper and Miquel Buch, who also requested it.
Elena highlights in the letter that there has been a “relevant change” with respect to the position maintained by the Government in recent years, which is why she requests again and “as a matter of urgency” this service for Puigdemont in Belgium.
“President Puigdemont, like any former president, requires an adequate and dimensioned protection service,” says Elena, who requests that Marlaska, in application of article 42 of the Organic Law of the State Security Forces and Corps, relating to protection procedure of public authorities outside the territorial scope, give the “necessary” instructions for its “effective” compliance.
Minister Elena also requests Marlaska that at the same time the appropriate procedures be carried out between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Belgian authorities for the transfer of the regulatory weapons of the Mossos d’Esquadra that should provide the protection service to Puigdemont in the foreign. An also common procedure that is carried out every time a political representative travels abroad with a police escort, from the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, to any councilor who requires travel with protection.
After repeated refusals to officially provide Puigdemont with an escort abroad, a group of Mossos traveled to Waterloo off duty to carry out this surveillance task. Periodic trips in which a sergeant participated very actively, who was subsequently hired in 2018 by the former Minister of the Interior, Miquel Buch, as an advisor in the department. This signing was investigated by the Mossos d’Esquadra themselves and the case was brought to trial. In fact, the Barcelona Court sentenced Buch to 4 and a half years in prison and 20 years of disqualification last September.
The second section of the Barcelona Court also sentenced the aforementioned sergeant of the Mossos d’Esquadra to four years in prison and 19 years of disqualification, one of the people who at the time collaborated with Puigdemont in his departure from Spain.
This case is one of those that the Junts per Catalunya group has tried to include in the Amnesty Law. The proposal that the PSOE has presented in the Congress of Deputies includes the cases of people who, in the context of the process, have provided “assistance, collaboration, advice of any kind, representation, protection or security” to the independence leaders. A statement in which both Buch and the Mossos sergeant would have a place.
