The Provincial Court of Barcelona has confirmed the decision of the court of inquiry number 7 of Barcelona to send a total of 46 National Police officers to trial for the police charges at different schools in Barcelona during the celebration of the referendum October 1, 2017, declared illegal by the Constitutional Court, as it considers that the recorded images of that day indicate that the officers may have committed not only minor crimes of injury, but also against moral integrity.
In an interlocutory hearing, the third section of the hearing rejects all the appeals presented by the agents’ defenses and by the accusations -almost half a hundred-, and thus reaffirms the criterion of the investigating judge, Francisco Miralles, which considered in a January 2023 interlocutory that there were enough indications of crimes of injury and against the moral integrity of citizens.
In the hearing known yesterday, the court rules out imputing more agents, in particular police commands – reason for the appeals of the accusations -, but also refuses to file the case against any agent, so it denies the requests of its defenses
The court, made up of judges Antonio Navarro, José Antonio Rodríguez and Carmen Guil, unanimously establishes that “the indicative legal qualification that the interlocutory award (by judge Miralles) gives to the events described goes beyond simple crimes of injury and clearly points out that some behaviors could be incardinated in the crime against moral integrity committed by a public official”, without this “assuming assuming the qualification claimed by some accusations, which we understand to be unjustifiably expansive”.
In the interlocutory known yesterday Thursday, the hearing confirms, beyond some specific corrections, the interlocutory in which Miralles agreed to initiate abbreviated proceedings against 45 public officials of the National Police Force and provisionally suspend the proceedings against 17 other officers and definitely with respect to three others. The same judge subsequently extended the proceedings to two more agents, but in May decreed the termination of responsibility for another who had died.
In the interlocutory hearing in January of last year, the judge left out of the case as a private prosecution both the Professional Union of Police and the Generalitat in their capacity as owner of the affected centers. The Provincial Court also confirms these exclusions.
In January 2023, the judge gave a detailed account of what had happened on 1-O in different schools based on the witnesses obtained and the existing videos, and ruled to continue with the procedure in all those cases in which he did not appreciate proportionality in the action of the agents. He also recalled that they were sent to Barcelona to comply with the order of the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) which required them to prevent the referendum “without affecting normal public coexistence”. In this sense, the Barcelona Court points out that “any conduct cannot be justified in the existence of a court order that caused the intervention to invoke the exemptions” invoked by some defense resources.
In addition, he rejects the statements of the police who stated that they were not at the specific place or that they were not the authors of the events attributed to them. “They are disproved by the images of the recordings and some photographs”, points out the interlocutory.
On the other hand, the court strongly defends the judge’s instruction “with rational, coherent, objective and dispassionate criteria, without any hint of political and ideological contamination”, and questions the accusations pointing out that this “is more than can tell about the content of the resources”.
In any case, the judges recognize that it will have to be the plenary who ends up issuing a sentence, “if the trial is to be held”, in an implicit reference to the Amnesty law that is being processed in Congress, which if approved it could also include police officers.
In this sense, a spokesman for the police union Jupol indicated yesterday in the framework of a protest in front of the Ministry of the Interior that the promise of Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska, that the officers would remain within the amnesty, does not convince them. “We have always opposed the law and we believe that the prosecuted police officers should be acquitted because what they really did was fulfill their duty to restore constitutional order,” said Ibón Domínguez.
For their part, Òmnium Cultural and Irídia, popular accusations, consider that the resolution represents “a great step forward in the fight against impunity” of a police action “not only disproportionate but also criminal”, which, as they recall, ” led to the condemnation of the main international human rights bodies”.
Despite this, the Catalan National Assembly (ANC), which also serves as the public prosecutor, regretted that the court rejected sitting in the dock for five commanders, despite having asked that they go to trial and that the court had assessed the ” recklessness” and the “culpable passivity” of the commanders.
