The National Court Prosecutor’s Office has asked to send to the bench 12 members of the Defense Committees of the Republic (CDR) arrested in 2019 for belonging to a terrorist organization. In addition, eight of them are also attributed crimes of possession, deposit and manufacture of explosives and havoc, of a terrorist nature, in an attempted degree, according to tax sources.
The Public Ministry has transferred this request to the National Court after the judge investigating the case, Manuel García Casatellón, agreed for the second time to conclude the judicial investigation, prosecuting these 12 people for terrorism as alleged members of a nucleus of CDR willing to use violence to achieve the independence of Catalonia.
In September 2021, García Castellón asked to prosecute the 12 detainees of Operation Judas, but the Criminal Chamber forced the magistrate to reopen the investigation after those investigated asked to carry out more proceedings. Concluded these, García Castellón closed the investigation again and sent the summary to the Criminal Chamber to proceed to try them. Although initially there were 13 people processed, the case was filed for one of them.
Thus, the prosecutor asks to sit Eduardo Garzón, Esther García, Sonia Pascual, Queralt Casoliva, Germinal Tomás, Alexis Codina, Jordi Ros and Rafael Delgado on the bench for crimes of belonging to a terrorist organization; possession, deposit or manufacture of explosives; and havoc, the latter in the degree of attempt.
For its part, the Public Prosecutor only blames Ferrán Jolis, Xavier Buigas, David Budria and Clara Borrero for the crime of belonging to a terrorist organization.
In his indictment, issued after years of investigation, García Castellón concluded that the detainees had formed “a parallel terrorist organization, of a clandestine and stable nature, whose objective would be to carry out violent actions or attacks against previously selected targets” using explosives and incendiary substances manufactured in clandestine laboratories.
According to the instructor, those investigated were allegedly grouped into the self-styled Tactical Response Team (ERT), a radical cell of the CDRs created out of the need to have a clandestine group of maximum confidence, totally devoted to “the cause”, to the that they were entrusted with the most sensitive actions.
The members would have participated, according to the judge, in forceful actions such as roadblocks or erection of toll barriers; in the creation and development of the coordination centers (CECOR) and they assumed the order received from a so-called “Catalan CNI” to provide logistics infrastructure to undertake an action in which it was intended to occupy and defend the Parliament of Catalonia.
