Day 3: first testimony from the accused highlights different defence strategies
(14/02/2019) Oriol Junqueras rejected prosecution questions and spoke of politics; Joaquim Forn answered but said he did not remember many facts.
(Original published: 14/02/2019)
Day three of the trial of twelve Catalan separatists at the Supreme Court in Madrid brought the first testimony from the accused, former Deputy First Minister Oriol Junqueras and former regional interior minister Joaquim Forn.
Each man chose a very different defence strategy. Mr. Junqueras exercised his right not to answer any questions from the parties to the prosecution and responded only to his own lawyer, with lashings of ideology and political messages. Judge Marchena ruled Vox could not ask him their list of questions for the record.
Mr. Forn, on the other hand, answered questions from both the Public Prosecutor's Office and the Attorney General's Office, as well as his own and several other defence lawyers, directly, obligingly and in some depth. He refused to answer questions from Vox, the private prosecution.
A nervous, agitated and emotional Mr. Junqueras, speaking for the first time in public since he was jailed on remand in November 2017, immediately labelled the whole affair "a political trial" and announced that he considered himself "a political prisoner".
"I was appointed Deputy First Minister of the Catalan government and dismissed upon the suspension of home rule."
He said "we are in favour of independence because we are democrats" and "before we are republicans, we are democrats, and before democrats, good people", adding that they had "never, never, never, never" proposed the use of violence.
"From my point of view, nothing we have done is a crime, nothing."
He said he was being accused "for my ideas, not for my facts".
"Voting in a referendum is not a crime, working towards the independence of Catalonia in a peaceful manner is not a crime, nothing we have done is a crime. We haven't done any of the crimes they want to attribute to us."
"I love Spain and I love the peoples of Spain and I love Spanish language and culture", he said at one point.
As the judge called a morning coffee beak at 12 p.m., an enthusiastic Mr. Junqueras shot out "that's a shame, just as we were rocketing along!".
When the session resumed, he appeared to concentrate somewhat more directly on questions from his lawyer concerning the facts, not his ideology.
He denied he had tried to block the search of the regional economy building on September 20, 2017, he denied he had known about a key strategic document called Enfocats—which prosecutors believe outlined the whole plan well in advance—and he denied any public money had been used for the October 1 referendum.
He confirmed the regional government had decided to go ahead with the vote, though, "because our duty is to protect citizens' rights, like the right to vote".
He said he had witnessed "some" police officers being violent, "but obviously not all of them" and alleged that "the aim of that violence that was exercised against voters was not to stop them voting but to generate a tense atmosphere which fortunately no one responded to with violence".
FORN ADMITS OCTOBER 1 WAS ILLEGAL
When Joaquim Forn took the stand an hour before lunch, the tone changed abruptly, with more precision, more detail about actual events and a willingness to answer questions from the prosecution.
He said he did recognise the authority of the Constitutional Court, despite its "political" composition, and that Carles Puigdemont had offered him the job as regional interior minister.
In one exchange, Fidel Cadena, for the Public Prosecutor's Office, appeared to take brief satisfaction in reminding Mr. Forn that the representative of the Spanish state in Catalonia was indeed Mr. Puigdemont.
"I said I shared the commitment to move the referendum forward", said Mr. Forn.
Despite his position as regional interior minister, he denied giving very many direct orders to the Catalan Police or having taken part directly in the execution of the referendum, and assured the court he had complied with court orders at the time, also recognising he had received the warnings from the Constitutional Court about the possible criminal consequences of his actions.
Regarding the events of September 20, 2017 outside the regional economy ministry, Mr. Forn admitted Catalan National Assembly members had formed the narrow passage through which arrested suspects and court officials might have passed, and that asking organisers to provide safety staff and liaison with the police was "habitual" at protests.
He admitted court staff and Civil Guard officers were in the building by 8 a.m. that day, though, and that they could not leave until "about 11 p.m.". He also said he knew some weapons had been left in the police vehicles outside at the mercy of the crowd, but that it was the police's responsibility to look after their guns.
He said he knew there had been "19 or 20" other demonstrations on September 20, "in several places".
He then admitted that the October 1 referendum was illegal, using that fact to explain how Catalan Police had worked out overtime allowances, stating officers had worked a total of 92,000 hours on the day, compared to a much lesser total on December 21, when regional elections were held and each officer was allowed four hours off to cast a ballot.
He recognised the courts had ordered the vote stopped five times.
Regarding a key policing meeting on September 28, Mr. Forn said attendees had been warned of the possibility of confrontation, the likely activities of CDR protest groups and the extreme right, but that "if you want to deduce from that document that [we knew there would be violence], I tell you we absolutely did not".
During the evening session, as questions from the prosecution and his own lawyer continued, Mr. Forn repeatedly could not remember certain key details, stating "it is impossible for me to remember that", "I don't remember" or "I don't know".
He said he had had no knowledge of the Catalan Police following Civil Guard and National Police officers on October 1, and answered several times regarding other pieces of information that he had only found out about it after the fact.
On the matter of policing numbers and logistics, he argued there were never enough officers—6,000 Civil Guards and National Police reinforcements and 7,000-8,0000 Catalan Police officers—to stop the vote from being held.
"I didn't direct the operation, it's impossible to tell you how many there were at each moment. I cannot say exactly."
He also said he had had a "heated argument" with the central government representative, Enric Milló—who is on the witness list for later in the trial—on the morning of October 1, and at some point after that conversation, police interventions at polling stations were halted.
The trial will continue next Tuesday morning at 10 a.m.