Junts celebrates that the Government meets its "demands" for asking Europol to unlink independence and terrorism

MADRID, 27 Sep. (EUROPA PRESS) -

Junts deputies in Congress have celebrated that the Government of Pedro Sánchez continues to meet its "demands" before the foreseeable investiture of the PSOE candidate and have positively valued that the Ministry of the Interior has asked the Europol agency to disassociate itself in a report to independence and terrorism.

"Another grievance that was an indecency has been resolved. The Spanish Government has already fulfilled the demand of Junts in Madrid and asks Europol to separate the independence movement from terrorism," commented the deputy of this party Marta Madrenas in a writing on the Internet. social X collected by Europa Press.

The Junts deputy in Congress Eduard Pujol has also spread this news from his account on the social network comment in Catalan: "Charge in advance."

The Ministry of the Interior has asked the Europol agency to eliminate the link between the Catalan independence movement and terrorism from its report on 'Situation and trends in terrorism in the European Union (TESAT 2023)'.

The request has been formulated in a letter dated September 26 and signed by the director of the Intelligence Center against Terrorism and Organized Crime (CITCO), General Manuel Navarrete, although sources from the Ministry of the Interior have disconnected said letter from the claims made by the leader of Junts, Carles Puigdemont, at the press conference in Brussels on September 5.

The Interior sources add that last December they had already warned of the "technical error", since no reference had been made "in any case" to the independence movements as terrorism.

In the letter signed by the director of CITCO, an organization dependent on the Ministry of the Interior, it is stated that Europol is requested to "rectify the headings so that the allusions to the Catalan independence movement are removed from the terrorism section and maintain in an independent heading as independence", according to the letter published in full by 'El Mundo' and distributed by Junts deputies.

In his press conference in Brussels on September 5, the former Catalan president who is a fugitive from Justice and leader of Junts, Carles Puigdemont, mentioned this circumstance among the requests he made to the Government of Pedro Sánchez to support his inauguration. "You cannot negotiate with those who consider us the second most important threat after jihadist terrorism and ask Europol to treat us as terrorists," he said.

Interior sources have explained that, before Puigdemont's request, the "technical error" had already been reported and they specify that "other considerations have no place", so they dissociate the correction from the former Catalan president's statements.

"The CITCO has never classified any independence movement as a terrorist group," added these sources, who specify that currently the only organizations declared terrorist by the Spanish courts are ETA and Resistencia Galega, "a classification that is replicated in the reports of the CITCO".

The reference appeared in the 'Violent Extremisms' section of the Europol report when alluding to "dynamics carried out by certain groups", among which the independentists are cited, related to the carrying out of "escraches and burning of Spanish flags" . "Without mentioning in any case," they specify in the Interior, "that this activity is related to terrorism."

According to Interior, on December 13, 2022, "after the analysis and integration of all the contributions received", a questionnaire was sent to Europol in which it was reflected that the Spanish authorities "in no case made reference to the movements independence movements as terrorism".

In this sense, the CITO "deemed it pertinent" to proceed to transfer all these circumstances to Europol in order, according to the aforementioned Interior sources, "to clarify the nature of the Violent Extremisms referenced and their classification as such according to international standards on the matter."