The lawyers of Òmnium Cultural’s president presented their statement of defence before the Spanish Supreme Court on Tuesday

The President of Òmnium Cultural, Jordi Cuixart, will base his defence on accusing the Spanish state of violating fundamental rights for the sake of an “overprotection of Spain’s territorial unity”. This is one of the arguments featured in the statement of defence that was presented on Tuesday before the Spanish Supreme Court, just before the start of the trial against the leaders of the Catalan self-determination movement.

The statement puts forth a set a rights violations, amongst them the right to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, self-determination, being tried competent court, appeal, an impartial and independent court, due process, the presumption of innocence, and freedom. Furthermore, the statement highlights that the judicial process “conceals acts of torture” as it ignores and avoids investigating “police violence” within the context of the self-determination referendum of October 1st, 2017.

The vice president of the entity, Marcel Mauri, affirms that “we are not presenting a statement of defence, we are presenting an indictment against the Spanish state on behalf of Òmnium Cultural and its president, Jordi Cuixart”. According to Mauri, faced with the current “exceptional situation”, Cuixart will go to the Supreme Court to defend the right to peaceful mobilizations, the right to self-determination, and the right to peacefully defend a political project. Mauri is convinced that the trial will end up in an international court which will condemn Spain for having violated democratic rights.

Mauri also argues in favour of peaceful civil disobedience as an instrument for confronting the grave violations of fundamental rights and freedoms taking place. According to the vice president of Òmnium Cultural, “faced with laws that are intended to restrict fundamental rights, we will carry out peaceful civil disobedience”.

17 years in prison for a peaceful demonstration

The Spanish Public Prosecutor is asking for a 17 year prison sentence for Cuixart, accusing him of a crime of rebellion because of the events that transpired during the fall of 2017, and in particular for his participation in the massive mobilization in front of the Catalan Ministry of Economy headquarters on September 20th, despite the fact that his actions were peaceful at all times.

As is explained in the statement of defence, on that day both Cuixart and the then president of the Catalan National Assembly, Jordi Sànchez, asked the demonstrators to “act in a peaceful and civic manner”, took “all necessary measures to channel the protests in a peaceful way” and always tried to mediate with the police officers that were carrying out the search on the ministry headquarters.

Cuixart has been in pretrial detention since October 16th, 2017.