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from the friend's-phone-was-not-a-lifeline dept.
Former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont was tracked by Spain through fitting his group's car with a surveillance device as well as following the mobile phones of his companions. He was eventually captured in Germany on his way to Belgium from Finland.
Spanish intelligence agents had been tracking the movements of the former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont using the geolocation service on his friend's mobile phone before he was detained in Germany at the weekend, according to reports.
Puigdemont was detained under a European arrest warrant in the northern German province of Schleswig-Holstein on Sunday morning as he journeyed by car from Helsinki to Brussels, where he has been living in self-imposed exile since Catalonia's unilateral declaration of independence last October.
From The Guardian: Spanish spies 'tracked Carles Puigdemont via friend's phone'
An international warrant for Puigdemont's arrest had been rescinded back in December but was revived for this occasion. Already back in September, the Internet Society issued a statement about the Spanish government's great efforts to outright censor online activities promoting or discussing the bid for Catalonian independence.
See also earlier SN stories:
Spain Moves Forward With Plan to Suspend Catalonia's Autonomy
Police and Voters Clash During Catalan Independence Referendum
Spain Trying to Stop Catalonia Independence Referendum
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday March 29 2018, @06:57AM (19 children)
So he will have to answer to the courts and defend himself there. Would you suggest that we simply ignore all crimes if someone claims that they are being politically persecuted?
Regardless of how fair you or I might think he is being treated, if he broke Spanish law then he has to answer for his crime. If the courts find that he has not broken the law then he will be released. This is not a discussion on whether Spain needs to change its laws.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 29 2018, @08:00AM (18 children)
That would be the approach I'd use with North Korea. And I'd use it here too. If they want rule of law, they should respect it first.
What crime?
But it is a discussion on whether Spain is using these arrest warrants as frivolous harassment.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday March 29 2018, @08:59AM (17 children)
If you read the source, it has explained what the charges are.
Nothing that Spain has done has been illegal. It is a string of alleged offences that are covered by Spanish law. You may not like them, but then you don't live there. You wouldn't want other countries to say the same about the USA, for example, who still have capital punishment on their books, or hold people without fair trial in Guantanamo Bay.
I support Catalonia's bid for independence, but that doesn't mean that they can flout the laws under which they currently live.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 29 2018, @03:25PM (16 children)
And you are confident of this how?
What flouting has gone on? I didn't see any myself.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday March 29 2018, @06:58PM (15 children)
Puigdemont fled the country when he became aware that the Spanish Government and Crown, to whom he had sworn allegiance, were looking into his affairs and his part in Catalonia 'declaring ' independence. That is pretty much 'flouting the law'. Imagine what would happen if people refused to acknowledge the laws that are in force in your own country.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 29 2018, @07:27PM (14 children)
And why were they looking into his affairs? What evidence of a crime was there? Spain has to have some version of probably cause. Once again, we go right back to my original observation that illegal persecution can take the form of phony accusations of committing a crime.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday March 30 2018, @09:23AM (13 children)
Are you just being awkward now? He declared Catalonia an independent state within Spain, which is contrary to the oath he swore to both the King of Spain and the Spanish Government. When there was a backlash from the majority in Spain, they removed him from office under the charges outlined in my earlier post, and when they looked into the affairs of the Catalonian regional government they discovered that there had been some 'creative' accounting. He was subsequently charged with that offence too. Now he has to answer in court for his actions. He might be found not guilty and thus be acquitted on some or all charges, but fleeing the country does not look like the actions of a man who believes that his region should be independent and that he should be the leader of a new Catalonian state.
I suspect that there has been far more media coverage here in Europe on this matter than there has been in the USA and elsewhere. I'm all for independence being achieved through legal and peaceful means, but trying to hide one's creative accounting by declaring independence, no matter how many in Catalonia voted for it, is not the correct way to go about it. Many Spanish business have their businesses and office there, and they want to be able to carry on their business in the rest of Spain and throughout Europe. Declaring independence would be a money grab by Catalonia without any means of those businesses being able to argue their cases, and the new state would not automatically be part of the EU. There would be significant limits on how Catalonia could trade outside its own region. Many thousands of jobs would be lost and many of Spain's major companies would suffer.
The Spanish Constitution does outline a way that a state could gain independence, although it has never been tried in several hundred years, but Puigdemont did not follow that route because he knew that he would not be successful. Now he is required to justify his actions to the Spanish people in a court of law.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 30 2018, @02:58PM (12 children)
What was the crime? What you just described is not sedition and rebellion, which are the crimes he's accused of. And it is valid to break oaths when the other parties to the oath act in bad faith, say, such as is happening here.
Then why wasn't that in the arrest warrant? Germany certainly has laws against embezzlement which would have made the extradition more likely to go in Spain's favor.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday March 30 2018, @04:53PM (11 children)
You are being argumentative. It is an offence under Spanish law to do what he did. I don't give a damn whether you like it or not - your opinion is totally irrelevant to the charges. It is not in the court of khallow that he has to argue his case, but in a Spanish court. And who said it was embezzlement? It was the misuse of funds described as 'creative accounting' - but we do not yet know any more than that. If he was using them for political gain to further his attempt to get independence for Catalonia then it might also be an offence, but it is not embezzlement. So stop trying to bring in another straw man argument. Lets just wait until this has run its course and then you can pontificate on facts rather than your own personal opinions based on what appears to be very limited knowledge of this case.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 30 2018, @07:25PM (10 children)
Where's the evidence that such actions were a crime? Sorry, I don't buy that a nonbinding referendum and a toothless announcement by a regional legislature counts as sedition and rebellion. The resulting persecution is not evidence of a crime.
Spain's chief prosecutor did. From here [politico.eu], where the original charges were announced in late October [politico.eu] of last year:
My Spanish is terrible, but here, "malversación" means embezzlement.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday March 31 2018, @07:04AM (9 children)
Because you are an idiot. You don't have to buy it, as long as it is part of Spanish law then it is an offence in that country. And if, as you seem to believe, it is not a crime, then it will be thrown out of court. It is so simple that I would have thought you could have understood that. You are living in a dream world where you think that your views should be taken as applicable to the whole world. Guess what, your own version of what should be legal and what should not doesn't amount to much outside your own immediate area of influence.
If it is a non-binding referendum then it cannot be used to declare independence. So his declaration of independence for Catalonia fails, by your own statement.
Definition: conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against the authority of a state or monarch. Now, declaring independence from the Government and rightful crown of Spain seems to fit into this definition, wouldn't you agree?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 31 2018, @07:52AM (5 children)
But is it? Just because you can come up with labels doesn't mean you have crimes. Rule of law should apply!
I don't recall saying that a non-binding referendum is a legal basis for such. But what of the declaration of independence? It's just as non-binding as the referendum. It's not sedition and rebellion either.
So let's review what actually happened. The referendum and announcement of independence are merely protest theater. At this point, while plenty of stupid stuff has happened, nothing illegal has happened. No one is rebelling or any of that other stuff despite all the puffery about independence. There might be a case for embezzlement, though that seems pretty sketchy as well simply because these governments usually have broad latitude over what they can spend on. Even a non-binding, unrecognized referendum (funding of which seems the basis for the embezzlement charge) probably is legal to fund.
The smart move would have been to give these characters rope with which to hang themselves (given how ham-handed the Catalan opposition has been, I think that might have worked beautifully). Either they will make a move towards rebellion and sedition (and something you can actually put people in jail for) or they'll continue with the pointless theater (and eventually run out of gas). Instead, the central government invoked a dubious clause of Spain's constitution, shuts down the legislature illegally, spreads thugs all over the place, and has been arresting opponent politicians on trumped up charges. They moved too fast and too heavy-handed, and screwed up the case.
At this point, it's just straightforward illegal persecution. If I were in Germany's situation, I'd reject the arrest warrant outright and then warn Spain that if it continues to play such games, then Germany will stop honoring its arrest warrants altogether.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday March 31 2018, @01:13PM (4 children)
I actually said "as long as it is part of Spanish law", which it is, then a crime has been committed. That is the rule of law in Spain you idiot!
From the British point of view, the declaration of independence by the US was sedition and rebellion. That is why a war was fought. In this case the Catalonian regional assembly had already sworn to uphold the laws of Spain and accept the King has the head of state, so doing otherwise is sedition and rebellion.
They did make such a move by declaring Catalonia independent. Which is why all this happened.
You are obviously arguing from a position of complete ignorance of the subject matter. Continuing this discussion is pointless.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 31 2018, @04:57PM (3 children)
And there we go. The problem here is that we have a giant circular argument here. The hubbub in question has been well-aired so we know the details of the crimes that Puigdemont is accused of. He didn't have a chance to rebel or commit sedition. Someone in the Spanish government merely has decreed that Spanish law has been broken because of some partisan grandstanding, shut everything down, and is now harassing political opponents with arrests. At that point, err with the accused.
So what? The UK of the time wasn't a democracy and rule of law was very tenuous. There were a number of powerful parties who could have declared sedition and rebellion on arbitrary weak members of society just because it was Thursday.
And you're making a giant circular argument here arguing that this protest was rebellion and sedition because that is what you believe it is. Where again is the evidence that it was rebellion and sedition?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday March 31 2018, @05:23PM (2 children)
Get back to me when the Spanish courts start taking your advice in preference to their own published laws. Until then, you remain an idiot. Your views do not matter in this case - Spanish law trumps your spurious beliefs.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 31 2018, @06:11PM
You're still doing the circular argument thing. If the court was impartial, then you're gold. But we already know details of the cases in question. The accused never had a chance to break these laws. A non-binding referendum is not binding and an announcement of independence doesn't mean that they intend to engage in rebellion and sedition. The court sided with the government despite that. It's a bad call.
Keep in mind that there's a thin line of interpretation between protest, and the twin charges of sedition and rebellion. Let's go back to your example of the UK in the 18th Century. The UK routinely treated protest as sedition and rebellion. The Boston Tea Party (a protest where East Indian Company tea was tossed overboard before it could be used as a precedent for collecting taxes on tea) was described [american-revolutionary-war-facts.com] by the Governor of Massachusetts (a minion of the UK) as an act of "high treason". And if anyone had been caught for the crime, you can bet they wouldn't be punished for mere destruction of private property even though that is what they did.
Such very flexible and encompassing crimes are the standard go-to for tyrannical governments which wish to squash dissent.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 31 2018, @06:39PM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 31 2018, @08:04AM (2 children)
No, I wouldn't. It's that simple. Even with all that, you're not actually inciting people to rebel.
Let us note the heavy-handed crackdown on the referendum and independence vote has done more to incite people to rebel than the declaration of independence did.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday March 31 2018, @01:20PM (1 child)
Why 'us'? Are you suggesting that there are numerous others who hold this bizarre view that you are stating? The crackdown may well have been heavy-handed, but that doesn't mean that Spanish law wasn't broken by the actions taken by the Catalonian assembly.
You may continue to live in your parallel universe. I choose to live in this one and, as a result, continuing this discussion is pointless.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 31 2018, @05:22PM
Even so, breaking the law is not automatically a crime and that's making the generous assumption that a law actually was broken. Catalan was given broad authority to do things including running referendums and making declarations, even when those things have no actual impact.