Catalan independence leader Carles Puigdemont declared and was released

The Sassari Court of Appeal (Sardinia, Italy) decided this Friday to release the former President of Catalonia Carles Puigdemont, who was arrested this Thursday in Alghero under an order of the Spanish Supreme Court. Catalan will be able to leave Italy but he will have to appear before the judges on October 4, said his lawyer Agostinangelo Marras on Friday.

On his release from prison, the former Catalan president, who avoided speaking to the press, He was cheered by a group of people waiting for him outside the prison, after which he got into a black truck.

The italian court has not requested any precautionary measures and his case will have to be referred to another court, which will study the question of the extradition request presented by Spain. In addition, the judge considered that his arrest on Thursday at Alghero airport had been carried out in accordance with the law.

Puigdemont, who intervened in a hearing electronically and on which weighs a European arrest and surrender order issued by the Supreme Court for sedition and embezzlement, he has already left the high security prison of Sassari where he was imprisoned.

The Italian Ministry of Justice clarified that has no decision-making power both in the arrest and in the possible delivery of Puigdemont to Spain, since it is a Euro-order and therefore a different procedure from that of a extradition.

“The Ministry of Justice specifies that it has no decision-making role in the procedure related to the European arrest warrant, such as that related to the case of Carles Puigdemont. The procedure is entirely in the hands of the judicial authority, both for the validation of the detention and for the final decision to hand over the detainee or not, ”it was stated in a statement.

Puigdemont’s arrest came days after the start of the Spanish government and the Catalan regional executive in Barcelona a process of dialogue to try to overcome the distant political positions that the two maintain following the Catalan secessionist process, in the midst of an internal division in the independence bloc.

This dialogue comes after years of misunderstandings and voltage due to secessionist demands, the peak of which came in the fall 2017, after holding a referendum declared unconstitutional on October 1 and a subsequent declaration of independence, approved by the Catalan Parliament on October 27.

These events led to the temporary suspension of the Catalan executive (Generalitat), treatment and follow-up sentence of 9 to 13 years in prison to nine pro-independence leaders, recently pardoned, as well as the escape of the Catalan president at the time, Puigdemont, and other members of its executive to escape the action of Justice.

The arrival of the Socialists in the Spanish government, in coalition with the leftist group United We Can, and that of Pere Aragonès (ERC) in the Catalan executive It was the beginning of the first contacts to reduce the tension.

In addition, there is the fact that ERC is one of the parliamentary groups that regularly support the Spanish government in Congress, where members of the government coalition do not have a majority.

(With information from EFE)

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