He says that it does not represent a problem of equality before the law, he alludes to social benefit and questions the lack of proportionality of the previous punitive route.
MADRID, 10 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The report commissioned by Sumar from legal experts on the amnesty defends that its possible application guarantees equality before the law and justifies its implementation due to the social benefit it brings when resolving a conflict between Catalonia and the State, given that the The criminal route deployed at the time was “ineffective” and aggravated the problem with “forceful criminal repression and a lack of proportionality.”
This is stated in the 40-page document, to which Europa Press has had access and whose main lines are presented in Barcelona, ??to support that the measure is the second phase of the path already undertaken with the pardons for the independence leaders, limited in time and influencing in its exceptionality. And they postulate that a future amnesty law will help to reconcile a conflict, whose first symptoms already date back to the ruling of the Constitutional Court on the Statute.
“Within the framework of legitimate political options is the articulation of a criminal policy that takes into account the social cost of the Catalan political conflict and is committed to contributing to its overcoming by enunciating the criminal prosecution of certain crimes,” reflects said opinion. prepared by five jurists.
In this document, they explain that non-political amnesties have occurred, such as fiscal ones in the case of Spain for the emergence of “black money”, but that “greater social utility” can be attributed to “political amnesties”, which are usually be dictated after a change of regime, such as the Spanish Law of 1997, or “overcome a certain political conflict without the Constitution having undergone any transformation.”
In this last case, it refers to the case of the regulations approved by the English Parliament regarding the Northern Irish conflict, whose parameters are “very different” from the amnesty that they defend enacting in Catalonia, alluding to the fact that the Irish case involved armed groups such as the Ulster Volunteer Force and the Irish Republican Army (IRA).
On the other hand, the opinion of the Sumar group of experts indicates that the turning point that started the conflict was the ruling of the Constitutional Court that annulled part of the Statute of 2006, such as the mention of the national reality of Catalonia, approved in the Parliament and validated by referendum, at the request of an appeal from the PP.
In his opinion, this “discordance” between the ruling of the TC and the result of the consultation on the statutory reform was the reason given for the Catalan parliament to approve a resolution in 2013 that called for exploring the process of exercising the “right to decide.” “, without at any time considering using “violence as an instrument of negotiation” with the State.
Then, he reviews and emphasizes that two other essential events were the rejection by Congress of the Parliament’s bill to hold referendums on its political future and the appeal of unconstitutionality by the Government, during the PP stage, to the law of popular consultations. endorsements in Catalonia, the bulk of which were later declared contrary to the Magna Carta.
And despite this, he highlights that the Generalitat called the 9-N consultation, carried out in a “peaceful” manner, while in 2015 the organic law of the Constitutional Court was reformed, with the obvious intention of converting insubordination into crimes of disobedience. to its resolutions in response to the”non-compliance” of this nature that had taken place in Catalonia.
A “climate of growing political tension” that led to the famous Parliament resolution of 2017, “in clear non-compliance with the current Constitution and as a challenge to the institutions of the State”, causing a “legally serious” conflict, as different resolutions made clear. .
And then he relates that the unilateral declaration of independence that led in response to the application, after agreement in the Senate, of article 155 of the Constitution to suspend the autonomy of Catalonia in various aspects, an “effective” measure to neutralize said declaration.
Therefore, the group of experts gathered by Sumar concludes that “there were” in the legal system “ways outside of criminal law” to resolve the “equally political conflict” and states that the processes opened in the courts by the ‘procés’ show the “failure” of the “punitivist” route.
Thus, the opinion emphasizes that the accusation of the crime of rebellion by the Prosecutor’s Office has already been strongly contested by various jurists, when this type is based on the element of a violent action and whose absence, the text reasons, was evident in this case. case.
Subsequently, it alludes to the Supreme Court’s ruling against the independence leaders for the crime of sedition, “not a little serious,” under the assumption of a riotous uprising, despite the fact that they interpret that the high court’s ruling itself proved that those convicted They never intended to achieve independence through unconstitutionality, but rather as an element of negotiation with the State.
“The criminal resolution of the conflict generated in Catalonia (…) meant the expression of a criminal policy that made use of a very questionable application of the current criminal regulations, without exploring other less distressing alternatives,” the opinion elaborates. In fact, it emphasizes that the demand for the independence of Catalonia or the right to self-determination “cannot constitute a crime in a system of non-militant democracy such as the one established by our Constitution”, alluding to the doctrine of the Supreme Court itself in several resolutions.
Meanwhile, the opinion of this group of jurists alludes to the fact that there is a new orientation “divergent” from the aforementioned punitive path with the new Executive and which is reflected in the repeal of the crime of sedition.
The elimination of said criminal offense meant, according to these jurists, a shift in favor of a political resolution of the conflict, followed by the granting of pardons to the politicians convicted by the ‘procés’, so the amnesty would be placed in a second phase in this new direction where the State “renounces the use of the punitive apparatus and trusts in the use of political tools.”
Therefore, Sumar’s opinion states that the current legislature is “suitable” to limit the application of the amnesty from 2013 until August 17 of this year, the moment in which the Cortes Generales are constituted, emphasizing that the Constitution gives support for applying it and when the punitive route of the Catalan conflict, controversially supported by criminal offenses already repealed, was “ineffective.”
Thus, they insist that once the sedition has disappeared, the amnesty is appropriate to pacify the political conflict because it “fully fulfills that postulate of the greatest social benefit”, taking into account that it is not at all about “decriminalizing conduct” but rather about “placing that time frame the commission of certain crimes and link it with a context of political demands”. And therefore they claim this measure of grace as a pacifying element when “they are not crimes of blood.”
