The judicial processes linked to the process continue on their way pending the approval of the amnesty law. Once the rule sees the light, a large part of the defendants who participated in some way in the referendum of 1-O 2017, in the related protests, and in the consultation of 9-N will be exonerated, including – there are the cases in which those investigated for terrorism are accused.
This is the case of the twelve CDR members accused in the National Court. With the proposed law presented by the PSOE in hand, this matter will be closed. But while it is not approved, the Prosecutor’s Office has presented the indictment, once the investigation led by Judge Manuel García-Castellón has been completed. The prosecutor is asking for up to 27 years in prison for allegedly planning violent actions to achieve the independence of Catalonia. All of them were arrested in September 2019 in the so-called Jude operation.
The National Prosecutor’s Office considers that the defendants joined a Tactical Response Team (ERT), a group of people from different Defense Committees of the Republic (CDR), “who would have formed a parallel terrorist organization” lela, of a clandestine and stable nature, whose objective would be to carry out violent actions or attacks with explosives and incendiary substances”.
According to the indictment, after 1-O and verifying that independence was not achieved, the CDRs organized numerous acts and actions of all kinds throughout the Catalan geography. According to the Prosecutor’s Office, the twelve defendants were part of the most violent and radical sector within the CDR, which would have created a “cell” whose aim – according to the prosecutor – is to achieve the independence of Catalonia through “more actions sensitive”.
Among their actions, the public ministry considers that the defendants, as members of the ERT, participated in the creation and development of the Cecor (coordination center) for the actions of the CDRs. They would have taken on the task received from a so-called “Catalan CNI” so that they would provide the necessary logistical infrastructure in order to undertake an action in which it was intended to occupy the Parliament of Catalonia.
The plan would be – according to the letter – to enter the building and then “defend it, all this given the technical and human capacity of this group, since to carry out these actions it would be necessary to have good knowledge of illicit networks and secure telecommunications clandestines, and also an important mobilization capacity”.
Among the actions for which they are held responsible are acts of protest that took place during the day of December 21, 2018, on the occasion of the Council of Ministers held in Barcelona; or the cut in a road on February 1, 2019, moments before the nine prisoners of the process imprisoned in various Catalan prisons were transferred to Madrid.
That morning a group of people poured a large amount of oil on the C-55 road, at a mandatory passage point for the procession that was transferring the prisoners from the Lledoners Penitentiary Center, which required that a the fire department had to intervene to clean it up and get the court-agreed transfer going.”
Among the crimes they are accused of is possession of explosives. Despite the refusal of the defendants, the prosecutor believes that they were making thermite, an incendiary or explosive material. One of the pieces of evidence that investigators maintain and that has been taken into account in the brief is that two of the defendants would have seen a video about alternative theories to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers, including there is the use of termite to demolish buildings. “When the video ends, the two defendants can be heard exclaiming with joy, probably because they saw the catastrophic effects that the termite could have,” the letter states.
