The judge of the National Court investigating the Democratic Tsunami case for alleged crime of terrorism, Manuel García-Castellón, has agreed to postpone sine die the statement by videoconference from Barcelona scheduled for tomorrow of the general secretary of ERC, Marta Rovira, and of the businessman Oriol Soler, due to the scheduling problems of his lawyers.
The judge has responded to the requests of the defenses of these two investigated, who claimed to have previously scheduled another judicial appointment on the same day that their clients had been called to testify.
Rovira’s lawyer, lawyer Iñigo Iruin, known for defending historical members of ETA, provided a certificate from the lawyer of the administration of justice of the investigative court number one of San Sebastián, dated May 17, 2024, to request the postponement, that accredits his designation as a lawyer in a procedure with “signing of pre-constituted evidence for May 22, 2024.”
The suspension of the statements of Rovira and Soler – editor and member of the so-called General Staff of the process that organized the referendum of October 1, 2017 – is added to that already granted to Josep Lluís Alay, advisor to former president Carles Puigdemont, whose summons also It was postponed due to his lawyer’s scheduling reasons.
García-Castellón scheduled Marta Rovira’s statement for tomorrow after denying her the possibility of doing so by videoconference from Switzerland, where she has lived since 2018. The judge denied the request for the sake of the agility of the procedure, since scheduling a telematic declaration from Switzerland would take longer than doing so from Barcelona.
With these postponements, the defendants try to buy time before the imminent approval of the Amnesty law in the Congress of Deputies after its passage through the Senate, scheduled for next May 30. And in addition to this case, Rovira is subject to a national arrest warrant in order to take his statement for an alleged crime of disobedience in the cause of the process.
On the other hand, the judge maintains for the moment the summons for tomorrow of the leader of Ómnium Cultural Oleguer Serra, the writer and businessman from Girona Josep Campmajó, the journalist Jesús Rodríguez – all of them residents in Switzerland –, and the computer scientist Jaume Cabaní, whose whereabouts are unknown. unknown, so the appearance of all of them that day is unknown.
The former ERC councilor Xavier Vendrell and the republican leader and businesswoman Marta Molina are also summoned to testify tomorrow.
