The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled in favor of the Spanish justice system for restricting the political rights of Jordi Sánchez, Jordi Turull, and Oriol Junqueras following their imprisonment for the October 1st referendum and the December 2017 elections. The Strasbourg court's decision, supported by Supreme Court Justice Pablo Llarena, found that the three leaders violated several articles of the European Convention on Human Rights and its protocols. The ruling aligns with the Spanish Constitutional Court's assessment that there was sufficient evidence to suspect serious crimes. This is despite the fact that, as the UN Human Rights Committee stated, the leaders had called on citizens to demonstrate peacefully, and isolated acts of violence could not be attributed to them.

So far, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has been overturning all resources of the independence movement that has arrived. This Thursday was no exception: Strasbourg concluded that Spain did not violate the political rights of Oriol Junqueras, Jordi Sánchez, and Jordi Turull when it prevented them from exercising their rights as members of parliament during their pretrial detention, when they were elected to the Catalan Parliament in the 2017 elections. The Court found no violation of their right to free elections or their right to liberty and, therefore, upheld the limitation of their rights that resulted from their deprivation of liberty ordered by the Supreme Court. In its opinion, the Spanish high court sufficiently justified the deprivation of liberty to "preserve the constitutional order," and recalled that all of them were able to participate in the Catalan elections and that, despite not being able to exercise their rights in person, they were able to take office and subsequently elected a president, Quim Torra, on the 20th.

Eight years after the August 17 attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils, the victims maintain their objective of having a judicial investigation clarify everything surrounding the 17-A incident. The ruling of the National Court, which focused only on the explosion in Alcanar the day before, ignored the possible relationship between the CNI and the imam of Ripoll, Abdelbaki se-Satty. However, in the last year the Congressional commission of inquiry into the 17-A attacks has revealed documents that reveal that the CNI had tried to capture Es-SattyIn this same commission, one of the three convicted for the attacks, Mohamed Houli, He openly accused the CNI of knowing "the imam's intentions.".

Josep Casadevall (1946, Girona) is an Andorran lawyer and served as a judge at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) from 1995 to 2015. In the last four years of his career in Strasbourg (2011-2015), he became vice-president of the court. He spoke to ARA about the latest rulings on the Catalan case.

After the 1-O referendum, and with the departure of part of the pro-independence leaders into exile and the imprisonment of the other, the political dispute moved to the courts. Since then, and perhaps with a touch of naivety, the pro-independence movement placed great hope in European justice. And it is true that important victories were achieved, such as the refusal of the German courts to hand Carles Puigdemont over to Spain to be tried for rebellion (yes, for embezzlement, which is the case he currently faces), or the obligation in the European Parliament to accept Puigdemont and Toni Com as MEPs (he stood for election despite being in prison). But the truth is that there have also been defeats, and, furthermore, the victories have not served to change reality or thestatus quo.

The Irídia-Center for the Defense of Human Rights association filed an appeal this Thursday to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in which it warns that no Spanish court has agreed to investigate the assault of a metro guard on a teenager in 2022 as torture. As of today, the guard has been acquitted. Despite the scene being recorded on video, the judge ruled that there was insufficient evidence and the injuries suffered by the minor were attributed to the fact that he had been restrained after becoming violent, according to the guard's defense.

The ruling of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Thursday, which supports the possibility that the Constitutional Court may veto, in certain cases, the processing of motions in favour of the right to self-determination or against the monarchy, has been a bucket of cold water, and there will be time to analyse it. In this article I focus on another issue relating to the ECHR. In the framework of the negotiations between Junts per Catalunya and Pedro Sánchez's executive in Switzerland, on Monday it became known that the Spanish Council of Ministers would approve Spain's accession to Protocol 16 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR; Treaty No. 214) immediately. This protocol, which entered into force in August 2018, introduced a significant innovation in the judicial system for the protection of human rights in Europe. Specifically, it allows the highest instances of state courts designated by the Member States to request an advisory opinion from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on questions of principle related to the interpretation or application of the rights and freedoms defined in the Convention. Applications can be made in the context of cases pending before the competent domestic courts, and the ECtHR has the power to accept the application and issue an opinion which is formally non-binding. Although the innovation is significant, it is not comparable with the impact of the preliminary ruling procedure in European Union (EU) law due to the different legal structure of the Protocol No. 16 procedure compared to the preliminary ruling procedure at the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) – the so-called preliminary question, which is binding because the aim is to ensure the supremacy of EU law.

The ruling of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) that supports the right of the Constitutional Court to veto the processing of motions in favor of the right to self-determination or against the monarchy is undoubtedly a bucket of cold water and a reality check for the independence movement. It is true that the ECHR decision balances the rights of the deputies and the TC, but it also seems that the idea that European justice would end up giving the independence movement the right in all its cases against Spain has turned out not to be true. It is not so easy, therefore, for European judges to overrule a decision by the highest interpreter of the Constitution of a Member State.

That a court that calls itself a "Human Rights" court should establish that it is proportionate to veto a debate and a vote in parliament on the right to self-determination and the monarchy is the closest thing to a contradiction. Surely, to support their ruling, the European judges have found more solid legal grounds in the Constitution of a pre-existing state and in the jurisprudence of its highest interpreting body than in the attempts to disconnect from a regional Parliament with concealed constituent intentions. But the paradox remains: there is a right for self-determination or the monarchy to be voted on by citizens in an electoral programme but not for them to be voted on by their representatives, even if a parliamentary majority is in favour of it at the polls.

A setback for the independence movement, which has always maintained that everything should be possible to discuss in the Catalan Parliament. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Thursday upheld that the Catalan parliament cannot discuss self-determination: it considers that the Constitutional Court (TC) has the right "in extreme circumstances" to veto resolutions that go against the Magna Carta in order to protect the Constitution. Strasbourg was to decide on Thursday whether freedom of expression and the political rights of MPs had been violated following the TC's veto of the processing of the resolution proposals on self-determination and the monarchy in the Parliament in autumn 2019, and it upheld the decisions of the high court. The ECHR recognises that the rights of parliamentarians were limited, but not violated. According to the European magistrates, the TC's decision was "proportionate".

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), based in Strasbourg, has now received appeals from all the political leaders the Spanish Supreme Court imprisoned over the 2017 Independence referendum. This Wednesday the last three were submitted Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) president and former Catalan vice-president Oriol Junqueras and former Catalan ministers Raül Romeva and Dolors Bassa. Now it is time to wait for the verdict. The appellants' legal team explained that all the appeals are expected to be grouped together into a single macro-case, and they reckon it will take "at least" two years to know the final outcome.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ordered Spain to pay €4,200 in compensation for "moral damages" to each of the Catalan judges who had appealed to the Strasbourg court after their case was dismissed in the State. The personal data and ID cards of the 33 Catalan judges who had signed a manifesto in favour of an independence referendum were leaked to the conservative daily La Razón in February 2014, a few months before the the 9 November vote on independence. The newspaper published an extensive article with the magistrates' names and ID photos.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has dismissed the first two appeals over police charges during the Catalan Independence referendum on October 1, 2017. After exhausting Spanish judicial channels, two citizens of Bages denounced Spain to the Strasbourg court in August 2020 for having violated their right to a fair trial due to the lack of a proper investigation of the charges. They also consider that other fundamental rights have been violated such as the right to assembly, free expression and not to be subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment.

Former minister Josep Rull is the third political prisoner who has appealed to European Courts against the Spanish Supreme Court's sentence of the Catalan Independence bid. This Friday, his lawyer, Jordi Pina, has officially filed an appeal at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg after the Spanish Constitutional Court rejected his last appeal -with two dissenting votes- and upheld the Supreme Court's sentence.

The violation of the right to demonstrate, of the right to be heard in court predetermined by law, to a fair trial and to an effective defence, and also of the principle of legality and the prohibition of arbitrary detention. These are some of the arguments that form the appeal that Jordi Cuixart presented last week to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) against the sentencing of the Catalan independence bid trials. The main objective of the document, however, is to turn his case into a European case against the "abusive limitation" of fundamental rights, as explained at a press conference by Olivier Peter, one of the lawyers of the President of Òmnium. He explained that the main argument to make in Strasbourg is that the sentence of nine years in prison for sedition violates Article 18 of the European Convention on Human Rights, relating to restrictions on rights and freedoms. "The right to protest cannot be limited by political will", he said, convinced that the aim of the repression in Cuixart was not to "apply the law" but to "take it away from the street" and "weaken" the role of the sovereigntist entity in the defence of the right to self-determination.