Sassoli accepts Puigdemont’s protection request

Carles Puigdemont’s lawyers asked the Spanish Senate and the European Parliament to find out if the facts explained in an article published in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo were true. The article detailed an espionage of the Spanish judiciary on the Catalan exiled president and his entourage. The Spanish Chamber has not ruled yet, but the European Chamber has.

President David Sassoli, at the beginning of Monday’s plenary session, transferred Puigdemont’s request for protection to the Committee on Legal Affairs, who will study the case in accordance with Article 7 of the European Parliament’s Rules of Procedure.

According to this Article 7, the Committee on Legal Affairs must now ask Spain for an explanation in order to clarify whether this investigation has existed and, if so, will remind that Puigdemont has parliamentary immunity.

The article in the Spanish newspaper states that the security forces of the Spanish state, without specifying which body, ‘have been accumulating until last Tuesday fifteen requests for wiretaps pending approval’. Among these wiretaps, the businessman and close collaborator of Puigdemont, Josep Maria Matamala, is mentioned.