Junqueras' defense will ask the Supreme Court to annul the sentence review with a view to appealing to the Constitutional Court

MADRID, 13 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The defense of former Catalan vice president Oriol Junqueras plans to present an annulment motion against the review of the sentence that the Supreme Court has made - due to the penal reform that repealed sedition and modified embezzlement - which keeps him disqualified for 13 years until 2031 for crimes of disobedience and aggravated embezzlement, with a view to later going before the Constitutional Court (TC).

According to legal sources consulted by Europa Press, the same route will be followed by the defenses of the former directors Raül Romeva and Turull and the former president of ANC Jordi Sànchez, while those of the also former director Josep Rull and the former president of Omnium Cultural Jordi Cuixart still They study what to do.

The sources indicate that the first step will be to raise an incident of nullity, something that the law conceives exceptionally for cases in which "any violation of a fundamental right of those referred to in article 53.2 of the Constitution" occurs, that is, , effective judicial protection, "provided that it has not been possible to file a complaint before handing down a resolution that puts an end to the process".

The annulment motion is formulated before the same court that issued the questioned resolution, so it will be the magistrates who tried and sentenced the 'procés', and who have now reviewed the sentences, who will study it when the time comes. Sources from the high court emphasize that the cases in which the Supreme Court annuls the proceedings are rare.

However, it is an essential procedure so that the defenses can present an appeal for amparo before the Constitutional Court, which --according to the aforementioned legal sources-- is the ultimate objective.

In the order issued this Monday, a presentation by magistrate Manuel Marchena, the court replaces the repealed crime of sedition with that of disobedience and maintains embezzlement in its aggravated version, which allows it to ratify Junqueras' sentence of 13 years of absolute disqualification, which expires in 2031.

The magistrates make the same legal reasoning with respect to Romeva, Turull and the also former counselor Dolors Bassa, who are still sentenced to 12 years of absolute disqualification, until 2030.

On the other hand, for the five convicts who were only convicted of sedition -- the former president of the Parliament Carmen Forcadell, the former councilor Joaquín Forn, the 'jordis' and Rull -- the Supreme Court declares their disqualification penalties extinguished.

The court explains that, in the case of the 'jordis' - initially disqualified for 9 years - sedition must be changed to public disorder, a crime that both in its current wording when the events occurred and in the new one after the reform implies such a reduction in the disqualification penalties that they have already been purged.

The same applies to Forcadell, who received 11 and a half years of disqualification, and with Rull and Forn, who were disqualified for 10 and a half years, although the court replaced sedition with disobedience for all three of them.

In this way, the Supreme Court has followed the path marked out by the instructor of the 'procés', Pablo Llarena, with respect to the fugitives of 1-O by ruling out that the old sedition can be automatically replaced by the new aggravated public disorders, in the case of those who exercised as public authorities in 2017.

"The authority that stubbornly disregards the requirements of the Constitutional Court, that disregards the prohibitions imposed by the Superior Court of Justice, that carries out a legislative process of rupture - even though it lacks all legal viability - is not simply altering public order", but "it is undermining the constitutional bases", he clarifies.

It also bets on the aggravated version of embezzlement because it observes "profit motive", rejecting that "applying public patrimony in the financing of an illegal referendum" can be considered a use of a "private, non-profit nature".

It also rejects the attenuated option of embezzlement that punishes the use of public funds for a purpose other than that intended, understanding that using public money for 1-O is not "a resolution that can be integrated into the functional space of a political leader at the when making decisions about the destination of public funds".