Catalan Leader To Ask Sanchez For Meeting After Prosecutor's Ruling On Independence Case

MADRID (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 05th June, 2019) Catalan President Quim Torra said on Wednesday he would send an urgent meeting request to Spain's acting Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez to discuss a ruling by a Spanish prosecutor on attempted "coup d'etat" against Spain.

On Tuesday, the Spanish Supreme Court prosecutor accused Catalan leaders, who are facing charges related to the region's failed independence bid in 2017, of staging a coup d'etat against Spain, aimed at substituting "one legal system for another by illegal means."

"The prosecutor has just told us that we are a criminal organization, they are asking for [jail] terms of more than 70 years for us, we have people in exile, repressions do not stop. This is a matter that should be settled. I want to ask Sanchez for an urgent meeting to discuss the situation," Torra said in an interview with the TV3 broadcaster.

The Catalan leader would reportedly send the request to Sanchez on Wednesday.

Torra also slammed the Spanish government for failing to fulfill requirements of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which had asked Madrid to release from jail a Catalan politician and two activists, who are facing trial over their role in the independence referendum.

In a report released in late May, the UN group said three Catalans, namely the regional vice president, Oriol Junqueras, and political activists Jordi Sanchez and Jordi Cuixart, were arbitrarily detained after the referendum in violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Madrid responded by filing two protest notes against the report.

In October 2017, Catalonia voted in a referendum to secede from Spain. The regional government later proclaimed Catalonia's independence, but Spain's Constitutional Court had ruled the vote illegal.