The Prosecutor’s Office has asked the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court to open an oral trial against the former Catalan councilor and MEP of Junts Clara Ponsatí, after the investigating judge, Pablo Llarena, issued last July the order of summary conclusion after taking statement when she was arrested for an alleged crime of disobedience for 1-O.
As confirmed by prosecutors to Europa Press, the Public Ministry has presented the document before the judges of the Chamber rule on Ponsatí’s judicial horizon.
Last July, Llarena issued the order to conclude the summary, considering that after having taken his statement, no further investigation was necessary. Thus, he put an end to the investigations and referred them to the Criminal Court, which will be the one to decide the next steps.
Ponsatí was arrested in July after she herself announced on her social networks that she was in Barcelona, ??despite the national search and arrest warrant against her.
Llarena agreed that the Barcelona Guard Court would take his statement to inform him of his prosecution for disobedience and thus be able to continue the criminal proceedings against him.
The former counselor took advantage of her right not to testify, after which she was free, as the instructor of the process had ordered, although with the imposition of designating an address in Spain to receive judicial notifications.
That was the second time that Ponsatí was arrested in Barcelona by order of the Supreme Court. She was already released on March 28 and was then released with the obligation to testify before Llarena on April 24, but she was absent, alleging, first, that she had a job in the European Parliament and, second, that she was protected by her immunity as a MEP.
After this sit-in, the instructor once again issued a national search and arrest warrant against Ponsatí with the sole objective of being able to inform him of his prosecution for a crime of disobedience and thus continue the criminal procedure against him, which until last March was paralyzed by find herself on the run in Brussels.
Llarena ruled that he had missed his appointment with the Supreme Court “unjustifiably”, considering that formulas could have been sought for him to appear even from Strasbourg; while the second question raised by Ponsatí was answered by the General Court of the EU (TGEU) on July 5 by lifting the immunity that was provisionally retained by the former counselor, the also former counselor Toni Comín and the former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont.
In this way, the TGUE cleared the way for Llarena, at the request of the ‘procés’ prosecutors, to reactivate the euro-orders against Puigdemont and Comín. However, in the case of Ponsatí it is no longer possible because she has been prosecuted for a crime without prison.
Ponsatí’s criminal horizon cleared after the entry into force on January 12 of the penal reform that repealed sedition and modified embezzlement, forcing Llarena to review the processing of escapees from the ‘procés’.
Until that moment, the former counselor was being prosecuted for sedition, so the disappearance of this crime – punishable by between 10 and 15 years in prison and disqualification – led the magistrate to replace it with disobedience, punishable by a fine of 3 to 12 months and disqualification from 6 months to 2 years.
Although both the Prosecutor’s Office and the State Attorney’s Office asked the instructor to add the new crime of aggravated public disorder, with penalties of 3 to 5 years in prison and 6 to 8 years of disqualification, Llarena ruled it out.
Thus, the legal sources consulted by Europa Press indicate that the path to be taken by Ponsatí is similar to that already followed before the Supreme Court by the former CUP representative in Parliament Anna Gabriel and the former Catalan councilor Meritxell Serret. After returning from Switzerland and Belgium, respectively, they gave a statement before Llarena and he released them to later end the investigation and move forward to trial.
