A Latin American television network has stressed that "there is no evidence of a crime, and no actions carried out" in the accusations of terrorism against seven Catalan CDR activists, controversially arrested and imprisoned after an operation by Spain's Civil Guard this week.
The news programme on the TeleSur network gives the context that the arrests occurred "a matter of days before the verdict against the [Catalan] political prisoners and 24 hours before the general political debate [in the Catalan parliament]."
"The Civil Guard says in a report says that those arrested possessed materials that were precursors for the production of homemade explosives," says the TeleSur report, which also includes the reaction of the Catalan president Quim Torra.
TeleSur notes that in the Civil Guard report, those arrested are referred to as "alleged terrorists" and "the conditional tense is used throughout" when referring to them. The TV channel reproduces images from the Civil Guard video which was published on social media, saying that there was no indication as to where the footage was filmed, and querying the way that materials shown in the video were handled without any "protective measures".
"In Catalonia it is considered that this is a police, judicial and media operation which is seeking to create a false narrative of violence attributed to the independence movement" says the voice-over.
As the international area of the ANC (Catalan National Assembly) noted in its tweet above, TeleSur is "outside the direct influence of the Spanish state", being an international network funded by Venezuela, Bolivia, Uruguay, Nicaragua and Cuba.