Amnesty International condemns Spain for passive role in referendum day violence investigation

Amnesty International condemned on the passive role the Spanish prosecutor has played in investigation police violence seen during the referendum vote on October 1 2017, which aimed to stop the vote and left 1,066 people injured.

"There's still a long way to go," says director

In a statement published on the human right NGO's website, the director of the organization in Spain Esteban Beltrán emphasized that "there's still a long way to go in investigating abuse by the police."

Further, Beltrán noted that the positive steps taken in the investigation have been done at the initiative of the victims or the judges heading the investigation, "without the [Spanish] prosecutor playing its active role."

Amnesty International is working on three concrete cases, including that of Roger Español, a victim of the police violence from the referendum who lost an eye in the confrontation, and who has been active in speaking about the occurrence.  

Not the first report issued

This is not the first time the NGO has spoken out about Spain's role in Catalonia's push for independence. Days after the police violence itself, they qualified it as “excessive and disproportionate force against demonstrators who were peacefully resisting." Earlier this year, it also released a report warning that Spain’s prosecutor and the Ministry of Interior “were obstructing” investigations about the Spanish police intervention on October 1,