Video of Catalan political prisoners leaked to the press

A video of one minute and forty-seven seconds with footage of three deposed Catalan ministers in jail has been published through the Catalan newspaper ‘ARA’. The recording seems to have been taken with a small camera without the politicians being aware that they were being filmed, and shows them in their cells, in the library, or doing cleaning tasks such as sweeping the floor or washing windows.

Laura Masvidal, Quim Forn’s wife, said about these images: ‘The violation of their rights is constant, now it is the right to privacy. This can not happen. We are reaching limits of the violation of rights that go too far. We will ask the prison how it could happen’.

Vice President Oriol Junqueras, Foreign Affairs Minister Raül Romeva or Home Affairs Minister Joaquim Forn, all of them deposed by the Spanish government last October, are seen throughout the footage in different parts of the prison.

Junqueras teaches Philosophy to some inmates, while Romeva listens carefully, and Forn is seen writing his memoirs in the library. The footage, probably recorded with a hidden camera, is clearly amateur.

Junqueras, Forn and Romeva are inside their cells for 16 hours a day, and they can leave the room for only eight hours.