BARCELONA: Spain’s government granted pardons on Tuesday to the nine imprisoned instigators of an illegal 2017 secession bid for Catalonia in a bold move to defuse the festering political crisis in the nation’s affluent northeastern corner.
The decision by the left-wing government, however, has angered many in Spain, even some of Catalonia’s most fervent separatists who say the pardons don’t go far enough.
Separatist sentiment skyrocketed in Catalonia over the past two decades, fueled by the global recession and an increasingly polarized political climate. Many Catalans, despite being comparatively wealthy and enjoying a large degree of self-rule, felt they paid too much in taxes and were ignored by central authorities.
In October 2017 the government of Catalonia pushed through with a referendum on independence despite repeated warnings from the country’s highest courts that a vote on national sovereignty by a region violated the Constitution.
Most unionist voters boycotted the vote, while 2 million of 5.3 million potential voters cast ballots for secession despite a violent police crackdown that injured hundreds.
The Catalan Parliament declared independence on Oct. 27, but it failed to garner any international support.
While the regional president at the time, Carles Puigdemont, and some associates fled the country, a dozen leaders of the secession bid were arrested. In 2019, Spain’s Supreme Court found the 12 guilty of a varying mix of crimes, including sedition, misuse of public funds and disobedience.
Nine were given lengthy prison sentences, while three were fined and did not do jail time.
Former regional vice president Oriol Junqueras received the heaviest sentence of 13 years for sedition and misuse of public funds.
Eight more, including former members of the Catalan Cabinet, Carme Forcadell, ex-speaker of the Catalan parliament, and Jordi Sànchez and Jordi Cuixart, two leaders of separatist grassroots groups, received sentences ranging from nine to 12 years.
They are now expected to go free after having spent three-and-a-half years behind bars, although they will likely remain banned from holding public office for years.
Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has weathered harsh criticism in recent weeks while his government prepared the pardons, both from Spain’s conservatives and far-right parties, as well as a large sector of the public.
But the decision is widely backed in Catalonia, where even many unionists hope it can help mend bridges. Important business leaders and Catholic bishops have also voiced their support.
In two regional elections since the failed secession bid the separatists have maintained their hold on power as the political battle lines have become entrenched. Roughly half support parties in favor of secession; the other half vote for parties that want to remain in Spain.
Spain’s government hopes that the freeing of the separatists can convince those Catalans who only recently joined the separatist camp to consider coming back into the fold.
Sánchez will also likely need the votes of some Catalan separatists in the national Parliament in Madrid to keep his minority government afloat over the next two years.
While celebrating the liberty of their cohorts, the separatist movement is far from satisfied. Its politicians are pushing for not just being spared the punishment but a full amnesty for all of those in trouble for helping organize the 2017 breakaway attempt. That would clear up their criminal records and allow them to participate in politics.
They also don’t renounce their dream of founding a new state.
But the protest held on Tuesday when Sánchez visited Barcelona to announce that he would sign the pardons was very subdued. Compared to the tens — or even hundreds — of thousands of protesters who have taken to the streets in recent years, a few hundred turned out to jeer Sánchez.
The pardons come after Junqueras recently acknowledged for the first time that the 2017 referendum was not considered legitimate by a part of Catalonia’s society. That is in stark contrast to the position maintained by Puigdemont, who says that the referendum and independence declaration remain valid.
WHAT ABOUT PUIGDEMONT?
The act of grace by Spain does not include Puigdemont and the handful of other high-profile separatists who fled to Belgium, Scotland and Switzerland, where they have avoided Spain’s extradition requests.
The government has insisted that they must return home to face justice.
Puigdemont and two former Catalan Cabinet members won seats to the European Parliament in 2019. Their immunity as parliament members was stripped by the chamber, which would allow Spain to again pursue their extradition. But a European court temporarily restored their extraordinary legal coverage recently while it considers their appeal.
So Puigdemont’s future, as ever, is uncertain.
Why has Spain pardoned 9 Catalan separatists?
https://arab.news/md7eu
Why has Spain pardoned 9 Catalan separatists?
- In October 2017 the government of Catalonia pushed through with a referendum on independence despite repeated warnings from the country’s highest courts
8 dead, at least 40 injured as farmworkers’ bus overturns in central Florida
The workers were being transported to Cannon Farms in Dunellon
FLORIDA: A bus carrying farmworkers in central Florida overturned on Tuesday, killing eight people and injuring about 40 other passengers, authorities said.
The bus was transporting 53 farmworkers at about 6:40 a.m. when it collided with a truck in Marion County, north of Orlando, the Florida Highway Patrol said.
Authorities say the bus swerved off State Road 40, a straight but somewhat hilly two-lane road that passes through farms. It crashed through a fence and ended up on its side in a field. The workers were being transported to Cannon Farms in Dunellon, which has been harvesting watermelons.
Photos taken by the Ocala Star-Banner at the scene show the bus lying on its side with both its emergency rear door and top hatch open. The truck that hit it shows extensive damage to its driver’s side.
There is no immediate indication that weather was a factor.
“We will be closed today out of respect to the losses and injuries endured early this morning in the accident that took place to the Olvera Trucking Harvesting Corp.,” Cannon Farms announced on its Facebook page. “Please pray with us for the families and the loved ones involved in this tragic accident. We appreciate your understanding at this difficult time.”
Cannon Farms describes itself as a family owned commercial farming operation that has farmed its land for more than 100 years, focusing now on peanuts and watermelons, which it sends to grocery stores across the US and Canada.
No one answered the phone at Olvera Trucking on Tuesday afternoon. The company had recently advertised for a temporary driver to bus workers to watermelon fields. The driver would then operate harvesting equipment. The pay was $14.77 an hour.
Harvard students end protest as university agrees to discuss Middle East conflict
- The student protest group Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine said in a statement that the encampment “outlasted its utility with respect to our demands”
- Students at many college campuses this spring set up similar encampments
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts: Protesters against the war between Israel and Hamas were voluntarily taking down their tents in Harvard Yard on Tuesday after university officials agreed to discuss their questions about the endowment, bringing a peaceful end to the kinds of demonstrations that were broken up by police on other campuses.
The student protest group Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine said in a statement that the encampment “outlasted its utility with respect to our demands.” Meanwhile, Harvard University interim President Alan Garber agreed to pursue a meeting between protesters and university officials regarding the students’ questions.
Students at many college campuses this spring set up similar encampments, calling for their schools to cut ties with Israel and businesses that support it.
The latest Israel-Hamas war began when Hamas and other militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing around 1,200 people and taking an additional 250 hostage. Palestinian militants still hold about 100 captives, and Israel’s military has killed more than 35,000 people in Gaza, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Harvard said its president and the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Hopi Hoekstra, will meet with the protesters to discuss the conflict in the Middle East.
The protesters said they worked out an agreement to meet with university officials including the Harvard Management Company, which oversees the world’s largest academic endowment, valued at about $50 billion.
The protesters’ statement said the students will set an agenda including discussions on disclosure, divestment, and reinvestment, and the creation of a Center for Palestine Studies. The students also said that Harvard has offered to retract suspensions of more than 20 students and student workers and back down on disciplinary measures faced by 60 more.
“Since its establishment three weeks ago, the encampment has both broadened and deepened Palestine solidarity organizing on campus,” a spokesperson for the protesters said. “It has moved the needle on disclosure and divestment at Harvard.”
At least 15 injured in Russian strike on high-rise in Ukraine’s Kharkiv
- A fire broke out at another strike site, and at least ten garages were affected
KYIV: A Russian air attack on Kharkiv city center in Ukraine hit a high-rise residential building, injuring at least 15 people, including two children, local officials said on Tuesday.
It was not immediately clear what kind of weapon was used in the strike, but it landed on the 10th floor of the 12-story apartment block, officials said on Telegram.
Ihor Terekhov, the city’s major, said rescuers were searching for the injured.
One person was hospitalized in a serious condition, Oleh Syniehubov, the regional governor, added.
A fire broke out at another strike site, and at least ten garages were affected, Syniehubov said.
Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, and the surrounding region have long been targeted by Russian attacks but the strikes have become more intense in recent months, hitting civilian and energy infrastructure.
Two French prison officers killed in inmate's escape
- The incident took place late morning at a road toll in Incarville in the Eure region of northern France
- The inmate was being transported between the towns of Rouen and Evreux in Normandy
ROUEN, France: Gunmen on Tuesday attacked a prison van at a motorway toll in northern France, killing at least two prison officers and freeing a convict who had been jailed last week.
President Emmanuel Macron vowed that everything would be done to find those behind the attack as hundreds of members of the security forces were deployed for a manhunt to find the attackers and the inmate who were all still at large.
Two prison officers were killed in the attack and two others are receiving urgent medical care, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said in a statement.
The incident took place late morning at a road toll in Incarville in the Eure region of northern France, a source close to the case added.
The inmate was being transported between the towns of Rouen and Evreux in Normandy.
A police source said several individuals, who arrived in two vehicles, rammed the police van and then fled.
One of them was wounded, the police source said.
It was not immediately clear how many attackers there were in total.
"Everything is being done to find the perpetrators of this crime," Macron wrote on X.
"We will be uncompromising," he added, describing the attack as a "shock".
Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti immediately headed to a crisis cell at his ministry.
"These are people for whom life counts for nothing. They will be arrested, they will be judged and they will be punished according to the crime they committed," he said.
Both the officers killed were men and they were the first prison officers to be killed in the line of duty since 1992, he added.
One of them was married and had two children while the other "left a wife five months pregnant", he said.
"I am frozen with horror at the veritable carnage that took place at the Incarville toll," said Alexandre Rassaert, the head of the Eure region council.
"I hope with all my heart that that the team of killers which carried out this bloody attack will be arrested quickly."
A unit of the GIGN elite police force has been despatched to apprehend the suspects.
Traffic was stopped on the A154 motorway where the incident took place.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin wrote on X he had ordered the activation of France's Epervier plan, a special operation launched by the gendarmerie in such situations.
"All means are being used to find these criminals. On my instructions, several hundred police officers and gendarmes were mobilised," he said.
Prosecutor Beccuau named the inmate as Mohamed Amra, born in 1994, saying that last week he had been convicted of aggravated robbery and also charged in a case of abduction leading to death.
The case has been handed to prosecutors from France's office for the fight against organised crime known by their acronym JUNALCO.
Law and order is a major issue in French politics ahead of next month's European elections and the incident sparked fierce reactions from politicians, especially the far right.
"It is real savagery that hits France every day," said Jordan Bardella, the top candidate for the far-right National Rally (RN) which is leading opinion polls for the elections.
Indonesia’s president-elect seeks to boost defense ties with UAE
- Prabowo Subianto is set to succeed President Joko Widodo in October
- His visit to Abu Dhabi seen as a strategic move ahead of presidency
JAKARTA: Indonesia’s President-Elect Prabowo Subianto wants to boost defense ties with the UAE, his office said on Tuesday, as he made the first official trip to Abu Dhabi since winning the general vote.
Indonesia-UAE relations grew under incumbent Indonesian President Joko Widodo, who in 2021 secured an over $46 billion investment commitment from the Gulf state. A year later, the two countries signed a free trade deal, which came into force last September.
Subianto, a former special forces commander and Indonesia’s current defense minister, is set to succeed Widodo and take office in October following his landslide victory in the presidential election in February.
On Monday, he was in Abu Dhabi to receive the UAE’s highest civilian honor, the Order of Zayed, in recognition of his efforts in enhancing bilateral ties.
“I hope Indonesia-UAE relations will continue to develop and grow in accordance with the ambitions of the two countries in strengthening cooperation across various fields, including in defense,” Subianto said in a statement after meeting UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan.
During Subianto’s time in office as minister, Indonesia and the UAE agreed to strengthen defense ties with the signing of a memorandum of understanding in 2020, followed by a protocol agreement on the development of their defense industries in 2022.
Subianto’s visit to the UAE can be seen as a strategic move ahead of his presidency.
“As we get closer to his inauguration, Prabowo has gained a boost in confidence to directly meet with MBZ and discuss strategic issues at the bilateral, regional and global level,” said Teuku Rezasyah, an international relations expert from Padjadjaran University in West Java.
“It’s only natural that Prabowo is visiting Abu Dhabi because it’s one of the world’s biggest sources of foreign investments … Certainly, Prabowo wants to seriously guarantee that investments from Abu Dhabi will be very strategic in the development of Indonesia.”
