Llarena rejects EU arrest warrant against Puigdemont to deny him formula to be sworn in
The Spanish judge believes that Puigdemont’s Denmark trip is a ruse to "evade" parliamentary rules
MadridPablo Llarena has refused to issue a European arrest warrant against Carles Puigdemont so as not to hand him the possibility of being sworn in as president of Catalonia. The examining magistrate of the Spanish Supreme Court thus ratified the freedom of the Junts per Catalunya candidate to travel freely around the world except in Spain, where he would be arrested immediately and handed over to justice. Llarena believes that Puigdemont has traveled to Denmark to trigger the warrant requested by the Prosecutor, and thus be arrested, possibly imprisoned, which might allow him to insist on an arrangement that would permit him to be sworn in to office.
"Given the legal impossibility of opting for an investiture in absentia in Parliament, the provocation of a detention abroad is aimed at providing an opportunity for the accused to argue that his absence is not due to his free decision to be a fugitive from justice, but rather the consequence of a situation that is imposed on him", Llarena points out in his statement of findings. And he continues: "He is seeking to favor the unconstitutional and illegal strategy that he has undertaken, and also to force a context in which he could vote by proxy, as if he were in the same situation as those who are available to this court and whose freedom has been provisionally restricted. In this way, the deprivation of freedom would be instigated to achieve his investiture and the vote that he can not obtain by following parliamentary rules". Thus, Llarena believes that the measures of deprivation of freedom can not be deployed so as not "to facilitate his transgression and rupture".
The judge does not rule out the notion that Puigdemont might have travelled to Copenhagen “as an academic pursuit" but, given the circumstances, it "is not unreasonable to assume" that he would use the detention to later request an arrangement to be sworn in. Thus, the Spanish judge believes it appropriate to postpone the arrest of the JxCat candidate until there is a "time when constitutional order and parliamentary normality are not at risk due to a detention that would be logical in another context."
In his interlocutory statement, Llarena takes the opportunity to point out that he decided to withdraw European and international arrest warrants because the definitions of the crimes being investigated are not the same in all countries, but he does not attribute this to an "inadequacy" or "error " of the Spanish jurisdiction, but to the "logical differences" that different countries may have.
