The regional police force of Catalonia, the Mossos d’Esquadra, has admitted in a report a number of mistakes in its failed operation to arrest the fugitive and former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont in Barcelona earlier this month, Spanish media reported on Friday. ALSO READ: Catalan police fail to detain Puigdemont, despite him giving public speech in Barcelona.
Puigdemont, who fled abroad after leading a failed 2017 independence bid for Catalonia, defied an arrest warrant to return to Spain on 8 August to deliver a brief speech to thousands of people in Barcelona before fleeing the scene and returning to Belgium.
In the Mossos report leaked to Spanish media, the force confessed to having no plan in the case that Puigdemont did not surrender himself voluntarily, as he previously indicated he would do.
His appearance in Barcelona was initially devised to be a bid to block the investiture of Salvador Illa, the new socialist leader as Catalonia’s president, with Puigdemont having promised his supporters he would present himself at the parliamentary investiture vote — in the knowledge that his inevitable arrest and imprisonment could scupper or delay the ceremony. ALSO READ: A new era in Catalonia, as socialist Salvador Illa is elected president.
However, after delivering his short speech in the nearby plaza of the Arc de Triomf, Puigdemont didn’t join his fellow colleagues and supporters of the pro-independence Junts per Catalunya (JxCat) party as they walked towards the parliament building – and it was at this pont that the Mossos lost track of him.
The 25-page report, sent to an investigating judge, portrayed the force as victims of a strategy of ‘confusion’ by Puigdemont’s supporters.
‘That Mr Puigdemont returned to Spain and then fled was not contemplated as a possibility,’ a letter signed by Eduard Sallent, the force’s chief commissioner revealed in the report which was requested by Spain’s Supreme Court, according to Spanish media.
A police drone hovering above the area observed Puigdemont leave the stage after his speech and then enter one of two tents set up behind.
The tents were ‘[confined] by metal fences and protected by around 100 people who formed rows and who kept their arms together as a protective barrier,’ the report said. When Puigdemont was out of sight of anyone, a white vehicle ascended the ramp of an underground car park, while one of his security detail made a space in the fencing to allow him to reach the car.
‘At that same moment the drone had also changed location and was directed to offer images of the politicians and authorities who were moving towards the parliament,’ Sallent said in his letter. Less than a minute later the drone returned to focus on the fencing and ‘it was verified that the white vehicle was no longer located there’.
Puigdemont’s actual movements from the tent to the car — having removed his jacket and pulled on a baseball cap — were only being followed by a single plain-clothes agent mixed in with the crowd, according to the report. The main body of police officers were in and around the parliament building, waiting for him to arrive there.
The police force ‘were convinced that Mr Puigdemont was among the politicians and authorities and that he was walking along the central trunk of the Lluís Companys promenade’ towards the parliament, the report said. Everything was designed to ‘distract police attention’, it added.
Police communications were overwhelmed by misinformation about Puigdemont’s location, and only the one plain-clothes officer managed to understand what was happening. He reportedly ran after the white car, but was unable to reach it. He was also unable to immediately report it to his commanders, the report added.
The Mossos then set up roadblocks across Barcelona after Puigdemont’s disappearance, but found no trace of him.
Three officers were later arrested on suspicion of helping Puigdemont escape, including one who allegedly owned the car he had used to leave the scene. ALSO READ: With Puigdemont back in Belgium, recriminations fly between Supreme Court and Mossos.
In conclusion, the report stated that Puigdemont’s escape occurred ‘thanks to a diversionary manoeuvre developed with the involuntary co-operation of thousands of people and the organised activity of a group of close collaborators’.
‘The scenario that finally occurred escapes all rational or political logic,’ Sallent said.
Puigdemont led Catalonia’s regional government in 2017, when it pressed ahead with an independence referendum despite a court ban which was followed by a short-lived declaration of independence.
Spain’s parliament passed a controversial amnesty law in May for those involved in the secession bid, but the Supreme Court ruled on 1 July that the measure would not fully apply to Puigdemont. ALSO READ: Controversial Catalan amnesty law gets final approval in Spanish Congress.
In an opinion article published on news site Politico last week, Puigdemont said he took ‘a very big personal risk’ by returning to Spain to ‘denounce the political obsession of a court that should be impartial’.
‘I didn’t return to Catalonia to be arrested. I returned to exercise the right to resist oppression,’ he added.
Click here for all our reports related to Catalan independence.
I didn’t return to Catalonia to be arrested. I returned to exercise the right to resist oppression. When a judge refuses to apply democratic law, that’s a form of oppression — one that no democrat should tolerate.
«Spanish judges pulled off a hybrid coup» https://t.co/1IRzknlRiy
— krls.eth / Carles Puigdemont (@KRLS) August 16, 2024
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