The Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) has removed its president, Jesús María Barrientos, from the trial of the former president of the Parliament and now Minister of Business and Employment, Roger Torrent, seeing his “appearance of impartiality” “compromised” by abandoning in 2018 an act in which the ERC leader spoke of “political prisoners”.
This has been agreed by the court of recusals of the TSJC in an order, which cannot be appealed, in which it considers the request of the former vice president of Parliament Josep Costa, one of the accused, and definitively removes Barrientos from the case, who had to preside over the trial for disobedience to be held in the Catalan High Court from July 12 to 15.
“Barrientos KO. I have managed to remove the president of the TSJ from the trial at the Parliamentary Table. He defended his impartiality by insulting and disrespecting him, which is why we challenged him for the third time yesterday. His colleagues have accepted the challenge unanimously”, Costa celebrated in a message on Twitter. Torrent has also reacted.
According to the TSJC, from an “objective and impartial perspective”, the fact that Barrientos left a public act on February 23, 2018 after Torrent referred to the existence of “political prisoners” in Spain, alluding to the leaders of the procés, supposes a “demonstration of rejection” that can generate “reasonable doubts” in the prosecuted and in society about his “appearance of impartiality”.
From July 12 to 15, the TSJC will judge the former president of Parliament Roger Torrent, current Minister of Business, and the members of JxCat and ERC at the time on the Chamber table –Costa, Eusebi Campdepadrós and Adriana Delgado–, for a crime of disobedience by allowing the processing of sovereignist resolutions and disapproval of the monarchy, for which the Prosecutor’s Office asks them for up to one year and eight months of disqualification and a 30,000 euro fine.
