27.05.2021 - 10:27
|
Actualització: 27.05.2021 - 12:27
Former Catalan president Quim Torra will face a second trial over refusing to remove a banner in favor of the political prisoners and exiled leaders ahead of an election campaign in September 2019. The public prosecutor wants a similar conviction to the one he was given in 2020, which ended up in him ousted from power.
The attorney general requests a 20-month bar from public office and a €30,000-fine for events that will be tried in the Catalan high court. Torra was sentenced 18 months of disqualification and a €30,000-fine in the first conviction.
The Catalan high court will try the former leader for a second time in an unknown date yet, in a procedure that could end similar to the first one, because in both cases Torra refused to abide by the judiciary and claimed that the order to remove them was agains the freedom of expression. In both cases the banners were finally removed but beyond the deadline set.
Second banner
In the second one, the court initially gave Torra 48 hours to remove the banner from 23 September 2019. It was eventually taken down on 27 September, after the 48 hour period had passed, and following the electoral board threat to send the Catalan police to enforce their ruling.
In the trial he faced for the first case involving pro-independence signs, the former leader argued that the electoral board “had no right to issue such an order.” The guilty sentence of Torra and the confirmation of the sentencing of the Supreme Court in September 2020 carried him being ousted from power and the Catalan government becoming interim and without president. An election and three-month-long talks between the main pro-independence parties ended up in a new government taking office on Wednesday after a seven-month vacuum of power.
