Catalan separatist leaves Italy, dodging Spain’s latest effort to prosecute him
By Gaia Pianigiani and Emma Bubola
ROME – Carles Puigdemont, the Catalan separatist wanted in Spain for leading a failed breakaway movement in his region four years ago, left Italy on Monday (27), days after his brief detention and release by Italian authorities.
The arrest and exit of Puigdemont raised and then dashed the hopes of Spanish prosecutors, who once again watched another European country set him free. Italian authorities acted on a European arrest warrant at the behest of Spain, which wants to try Puigdemont on sedition charges after he led an unsuccessful attempt to establish an independent Catalonia.
“He left this morning for Brussels,” said Puigdemont’s lawyer, Agostinangelo Marras.
Puigdemont’s office in Brussels confirmed his departure from Italy and said he would attend a meeting in Brussels on Monday afternoon.
Puigdemont, a member of the European Parliament, has been living in Brussels in freedom. The Belgian government has refused to send him back to Spain for trial, and a German court let him go in 2018 after a brief detention there.
An Italian court is scheduled to start considering next week whether to act on the warrant for his arrest and send Puigdemont to Spain to face criminal charges. Despite his departure from the country, his lawyer said that, if required, Puigdemont would return to Italy for the court decision.
The Italian police arrested Puigdemont on Thursday (23) as he landed at the airport to attend a Catalan folk festival on the island of Sardinia and to meet pro-independence leaders there.
But Friday (24), an Italian court ordered his release, ruling that Puigdemont’s status as a member of European Parliament gave him the right to leave the country to participate in meetings in Brussels.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain said Friday that his government would respect the judicial decisions but added: “It is obvious that Puigdemont must face justice.”
Spain has repeatedly issued international warrants in an attempt to prosecute Puigdemont. But the latest effort came at a critical moment, just over a week after Sánchez visited Barcelona, the regional capital of Catalonia, to start a fresh round of negotiations with separatist politicians aimed at ending a territorial conflict that has been Spain’s biggest political headache for the past decade.
-New York Times