Ex-Catalan police chief cleared of sedition in failed independence push
The former head of Catalonia’s regional police force has been cleared of wrongdoing over his alleged role in the failed independence push three years ago after Spain’s highest criminal court found no evidence of sedition or disobedience.
Josep Lluís Trapero, who served as the chief of the Mossos d’Esquadra until he was sacked by the central government in October 2017, had faced up to 10 years in prison if convicted of colluding with the regional government of Carles Puigdemont.
Also on trial earlier this year at the Audiencia Nacional court were Pere Soler, a former regional police director, César Puig, a former Catalan interior ministry official, and Teresa Laplana, a senior Mossos officer.
Prosecutors had alleged that the four defendants “were key players in hindering or seriously complicating the fulfilment of court orders with the aim of carrying out the secessionist plan”.
All four were acquitted on Wednesday morning after judges found no evidence that they had sided with Puigdemont’s pro-independence regional government as it attempted to break away from Spain by staging an illegal referendum and then unilaterally declaring independence.
The trial had focused on the regional police’s alleged failure to stop the referendum from going ahead on 1 October 2017, and on the force’s actions almost a fortnight earlier, when pro-independence protests had trapped national police inside a Barcelona building and damaged their vehicles.
The judges said prosecutors had not proved that the four had “tried to impede or complicate the obeying of resolutions” from various courts that had ruled against the independence bid. Nor, they added, had the defendants “come to an agreement with the leaders of the independence process nor supported their actions through passivity from the regional police force”.
Trapero, who won plaudits for his force’s response to the terrorist attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils a few weeks before the referendum, had rejected accusations that he and his officers had failed to act.
“I can’t accept this idea of passivity,” he told the court in January.
“You can’t conclude that we didn’t want to do anything. There were many scenarios. Maybe with more officers and planning we could have done things differently but it’s not fair to suggest we only acted as mediators because it’s not true.”
The acquittal comes almost a year after the Spanish supreme court’s decision to jail nine Catalan separatist leaders over their roles in the failed bid for secession sparked angry protests and violent clashes with police.
Puigdemont’s successor, Quim Torra, welcomed the acquittal but said it underlined the “unfair” sentences imposed on the nine jailed leaders.
Torra stood down as Catalonia’s president last month after the supreme court upheld the sentence of a lower court that had found him guilty of disobedience for displaying pro-independence symbols on public buildings during last year’s general election campaign.
Roger Torrent, the speaker of the regional parliament and another supporter of Catalan independence, also described the verdict as “very good news”, but added it was “yet another demonstration of the enormous injustice committed by the supreme court”.
