Catalonia: Nine Pro-Independence Activists Arrested by Spanish Police
Today [23 September 2019], nine Catalan pro-independence activists have been arrested by the Spanish police for allegedly planning violent actions ahead of Catalonia’s Independence Day celebrations. These arrests come as the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) is attending the Human Dimension Implementation Meetings (HDIM) at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) – where today’s agenda revolves around human rights and counterterrorism – among other things to discuss cases of arbitrary detentions of activists accused for terrorism.
Below is an article published by CatalanNews:
Nine pro-independence activists were arrested on Monday morning [23 September 2019] by Spain’s Guardia Civil police.
They were accused of supposedly planning violent actions, Spain’s home affairs ministry sources confirmed to the Catalan News Agency.
Several raids related to the same police operation began on Monday morning [23 September 2019], some of which were in Sabadell, a large town in Barcelona metro area.
The operation has been called for by Spain’s National Court in Madrid. Sources of the court said that the activists are members of the CDR pro-independence group have been investigated for over a year for terrorism.
The arrested individuals will testify before the National Court in Spain's capital in the coming days.
Last year [2018] two other activists were accused of terrorism – one of them, Adrià Carrasco, went into exile, and the other one, Tamara Carrasco, was held in her town before the charges were dropped for both.
The CDR organization reacted to the arrests on Twitter, saying: "No matter how many indiscriminate raids and arbitrary detentions there are, they won't stop a determined and combative people."
The CDR, or Committees for the Defence of the Republic, are a network of pro-independence assemblies set up in 2017 that defend the bid split from Spain by promoting demonstrations and protests.
The arrests come as the verdict in the trial of independence leaders in the Supreme Court is due out soon. On Monday [23 September 2019], the acting Spanish interior minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, did not rule out deploying extra police in Catalonia "to guarantee security."
Photo courtesy of Assemblea.cat @Flickr
