Amnestied! The appeals section of the civil and criminal chamber of the Catalan High Court has erased the criminal liability of former Catalan minister of the interior Miquel Buch and the Mossos Catalan police agent, Lluís Escolà —whom Buch hired to advise him— in application of the new amnesty law, according to the ruling, published on Tuesday. The Barcelona Audience had sentenced them to four and a half years in prison, considering that Escolà was hired to act as an escort for the Catalan president in exile, Carles Puigdemont, and not as an adviser. In addition to the prison sentence for the crimes of misuse of funds and abuse of authority, it made them return over 50,000 euros to the Catalan government, for the salary received by Escolà, a fine which is now also dismissed. The court also issued three more rulings, in which it applied the amnesty to the first activists and demonstrators who were sentenced to prison terms. An appeal can be lodged against these rulings to the Spanish Supreme Court.
The case of Buch and Escolà, defended by criminal lawyers Judit Gené and Isabel Elbal, respectively, is the first in which the Catalan independence process amnesty law, approved a fortnight ago, is applied. The lawyers told the Catalan High Court its ruling fit into the law of criminal oblivion because it is stated they acted for pro-independence and in protection of president Puigdemont. The ruling, "does not state there was personal enrichment" in the crime of misuse of public funds, according to the defence lawyers, which is the hypothetical case in which the law would exclude the case from being subject to amnesty.
Misuse of public funds, included in the amnesty
The court states in its ruling, after analysing the law of criminal forgetfulness, that "the decisive acts of misuse of funds are not excluded from the amnesty as long as they are related to some of the general acts included in the law", aimed at "financing, supporting or facilitating the carrying out of any of the actions, and when there has been no personal enrichment, always understood as personal benefit of a patrimonial nature". For this reason, the court states it extinguishes the criminal liability of Buch and Escolà in accordance with the provisions of Article 3 of Organic Law 1/2024, and also in accordance with the provisions of Article 8, it declares the extinction of their civil liability.
In its ruling, the court states that Buch and Escolà must be pardoned, given that "it would be an insurmountable paradox if the person who enables another person to perform security and safety duties for the former Catalan president, through the issuing of an authorising decision, were to be granted amnesty given the absence of any ‘personal financial benefit’, and the person who actually performs those security and safety duties directly could not be granted an amnesty given that the concerned person merely receives the corresponding payment for the services provided, but only within the objective scope determined by law.’
The activists as well
The court, presided over by the judge Àngels Vivas, reviewed this Tuesday Buch's and Monaguillo's cases, but also eight other cases of convicted activists and protesters, as it said it would do last week. Precisely, Alerta Solidària, a Catalan legal aid group, reported that Víctor Verdejo, sentenced to three years in prison for the Tsunami mobilisations at the Camp Nou, in 2019, has been the first activist amnestied. The amnesty was then applied for the three young people of Granollers, seven protesters who in January 2018 marched for Puigdemont's investiture, when he was already in exile, and Oleksandr, sentenced to the highest penalty for a protest: seven and a half years in prison, along with Francesc Colomines, who had received a one-year jail sentence and was tried together with Oleks, even though they did not know each other and did not act together. The High Court opens the door for possible civil claims in these cases.
In these rulings, which states police officers were injured in the events, the TSJC allows for appeals to be lodged against its ruling.