Jordi Turull, Josep Rull and Jordi Sànchez have again called on the Constitutional Court to release them from pretrial detention. This time, calling on a recent verdict from the European Court of Human Rights on the case of Demirtaş v Turkey which says that political rights of elected representatives are incompatible with pretrial detention.
According to the politicians' defence counsel, the resolution is "perfectly comparable" to their case, "since the sentence takes responsibility for defining what the political rights are of a parliamentary office-holder who finds themselves in pretrial detention and what situations violate their rights with an extended pretrial detention".
The European court's verdict declares that article 3 of protocol 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights was violated in the Turkish case and says explicitly that his pretrial detention was "incompatible with the very essence of the applicant’s right under [the article] to be elected and to sit in Parliament and infringed the sovereign power of the electorate that had elected him as a member of parliament".
According to the court, "the extensions of Mr Demirtaş’s detention, especially during two crucial campaigns, namely the referendum and the presidential election, had pursued the predominant ulterior purpose of stifling pluralism and limiting freedom of political debate, which was at the very core of the concept of a democratic society".
Unlike Demirtaş, however, none of the imprisoned Catalan deputies currently receive their salaries as members of the chamber, because they've been suspended.
Following the decision from Strasbourg, lawyer Jordi Pina has called for the Spanish court to suspend the cautionary measures against his clients until there is a firm sentence and for them to be allowed to fulfill their role as deputies again.