Former Catalan Minister Homs facing trial “for listening to people’s demands”, says Puigdemont

Barcelona (CNA).- The Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont, said with regret that the former Catalan Minister and Catalan Democratic Party (PDC) spokesperson in the Spanish Parliament, Francesc Homs, has to testify this Monday in the Supreme Court “for listening to people’s demands and putting out ballot boxes” for 9-N symbolic vote. Puigdemont has recalled that just two years ago Scotland was allowed to vote in a referendum agreed with the British Government, but complained that former Catalan President, Artur Mas, former Catalan Vice President, Joana Ortega and former Catalan Minister for Education, Irene Rigau, will have to go to trial for having tried a “similar formula” to the one used by the Scottish and British Governments. 

Homs is being investigated for co-organising the informal consultation on independence in 2014. Former Catalan President, Artur Mas, who has been summonsed for the same case together with Catalan Vice President, Joana Ortega and former Catalan Minister for Education, Irene Rigau, backed Homs prior to his statement. Other Catalan Ministers such as Santi Vila, Meritxell Borràs, Meritxell Serret and Neus Munté, and the left-wing pro-independence party ERC spokesperson in the Spanish Government, Joan Tardà, were also present in front of the entrance to the Supreme Court.

Additional accusations added last May

The former Catalan Minister had to appear in the Court last March for having signed a letter which authorised the company T-Systems, which provided the computers used during the symbolic vote, to move on and continue with the requested tasks, despite the Spanish Constitutional Court (TC) suspension of the consultation. Homs admitted then his responsibility and authorship of the letter, but assured that the suspension of the participative process by the TC on the 4th of November, five days before the vote took place, was “ambiguous” and that, therefore, neither him nor any of the members of the government at that time can be accused of having disobeyed the suspension.

In May, however, the accusations of disobedience, misappropriation of public funds and perversion of justice were added to the inquiry. These are the same charges for which Artur Mas, Joana Ortega and Irene Rigau were also summonsed last October and will have to go to trial. Homs believes that these added charges respond to the fact that he is the spokesperson of a parliamentary group that “in specific circumstances may be key to forming a Spanish Government that wouldn’t be favourable to the People’s Party”. “The letter is a pretext”, he said, while describing the whole case as “politically” motivated.