Puigdemont's extradition 'very likely,' says professor

The deposed Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, currently detained in a German prison awaiting a decision on his extradition to Spain, is facing charges of rebellion. If found guilty by the Spanish courts, he could go to prison for up to forty years. His freedom currently hangs in the balance of the German judicial system. According to a professor of procedural law at the University of Barcelona, Jordi Nieva-Fenoll, “it is very likely that Puigdemont will be extradited.”

In Germany, he explained, the crime of rebellion goes under the name of high treason. “The facts that occurred in Spain are more or less the same as what would be judged in Germany as high treason,” Nieva-Fenoll told Catalan News. It usually takes judges around two months to make a decision on matters such as these, he stated, but it can take longer.

For somebody to be charged with rebellion, there has to be evidence of the instigation of violence. “What does this violence mean? It does not mean a mild violence, it has to be something very big, something grievous, important and relevant,” he said. “It’s not just the violence that you can have in a meeting in the streets, or maybe a riot, it has to be something generalized. Something that really stops a country.”

Nieva-Fenoll believes that the chances are high for Puigdemont to be extradited by Germany. Yet other pro-independence officials currently abroad with arrest warrants against them are in a different situation. “In the case of the others, they are in different countries, and in these matters of extradition, the ideology and mentality of every country is a very strong point,” the professor said. “For instance, in Switzerland, a country of liberties, a country of human rights, maybe they shall understand that under these facts, Spain is judging a political case.”