Barcelona court upholds acquittal of Catalan activist and rejects prosecutors’ appeal

A court in Barcelona ruled on Friday to uphold the absolution of Tamara Carrasco, a pro-independence activist arrested in 2018 under terrorism charges, after rejecting an appeal from the public prosecutor requesting a prison sentence.

The decision to stand by Carrasco’s acquittal and dismiss subsequent legal challenges could put an end to an almost 3-year long judicial struggle to clear the Catalan activist of all criminal accusations. These range from the initial charges of rebellion, sedition, and terrorism, to the lesser offences of public disorders.

During this time, Carrasco spent over a year confined to her hometown of Viladecans, in the outskirts of Barcelona, following a rare judicial decision most often applied to perpetrators of gender-based violence. The judgment was later overturned and deemed "disproportionate."

When she was first detained, police used a voice message sent to a Whatsapp group to accuse her of instructing a local branch of the Committees in Defense of the Republic (CDR), a decentralized network of protest groups created in the run-up to the October 2017 referendum, which has been responsible for actions including blocking off roads and toll booths.  

However, she has now been absolved of all allegations after the judge ruled that her Whatsapp message was sent to a group of friends, and did not classify as exercising coordination functions of the CDR activist group. 

Another CDR activist, who escaped the same police operation that arrested Carrasco, returned to Catalonia from a two-year exile in Belgium last week after his charges were dropped.