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The Amnesty Law is still in the process of being processed and already has its first beneficiaries. A court in Girona yesterday agreed to postpone for a year the trial in which up to four years in prison and heavy compensation were requested for four defendants accused of public disorder for interrupting rail traffic on the first anniversary of October 1.

The request for the suspension of the trial in view of the probable approval of a law that would have led to the case being archived was presented by the lawyer Benet Salellas, also a lawyer in cases of relevance of the Catalan independence process such as that of Tsunami Democràtic.

The position of the parties to the request has revealed a first clash between the State Attorney's Office - the legal arm of the Government - and the Prosecutor's Office. While the Attorney General's Office supported the defendants' position, the Public Prosecutor's Office opposed it. The decision of the lawyer of the Administration of Justice of the Criminal Court number 2 was to postpone the oral hearing until November 2024.

In its brief, the State Attorney's Office - which is acting for damages to Renfe and Adif - supports the suspension "in accordance with the parliamentary processing of the aforementioned organic law, which if approved would imply the extinction of the criminal responsibility of the four defendants and the termination of it". He also assesses the personal and material cost of the two-day trial.

On the other hand, the Attorney General's Office maintained that what is being processed in Congress "is not a law that is currently in force and applicable, since it has not yet been approved or sanctioned. Only one bill has been introduced in Congress [...] so it still has a long way to go before it actually enters into force."

To this he adds that "it is unknown at this time what the specific scope of application will be" of the law, so it cannot yet be determined "whether the facts and crimes for which oral proceedings have been opened can be understood to be included in it".

The case asks for four years in prison for the defendants for disorder, damage and injury, in addition to a fine of 12,125 euros each. Also, that they compensate Renfe and Adif with just over 25,000 euros for damages and delays in traffic and another 1,050 for minor injuries to four security guards.

  • Sentence of the Catalan independence process
  • Amnesty
  • Justice