The Catalan police have suspended, as a precautionary measure, the three officers arrested for allegedly helping former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont to flee after his fleeting reappearance in Barcelona on 8 August, it was reported today.
As reported in El Mundo and confirmed to EFE by police sources, the three Mossos d’Esquadra officers have been suspended while the judicial investigation into their arrest continues.
The Mossos detained the three officers for allegedly providing protection and helping Puigdemont to flee Barcelona on 8 August, despite the fact that he had an arrest warrant issued by the Supreme Court.
The three officers were released after being brought to court.
One of the arrested officers is the owner of the vehicle in which Puigdemont fled, although in his case he claimed to have lent the car to a friend who is in a wheelchair, who was the woman driving when the former president of the Catalan regional government managed to escape without being arrested.
In their report to the Supreme Court of Justice on Puigdemont’s failed arrest, the Mossos admit that the former Catalan president’s ‘distraction manoeuvre’, in a move that ‘escapes any rational or political logic’, plunged them into a situation of ‘confusion’ and ‘uncertainty’ that prevented them from arresting him.
The former Catalan leader, who has been in exile in Belgium since Catalonia’s failed independence process in 2017, announced in early August that he would be returning to Spain after being elected to the Catalan parliament in early regional elections, in which his party, Together for Catalonia, came second after the Socialists.
Puigdemont then took it for granted that he would be arrested when he returned to Spain, where he has a national arrest warrant, after not being granted amnesty for the offence of embezzlement.
In the Catalan capital, the former president of the Generalitat (regional government) walked through the streets before taking to a stage to give a speech in front of thousands of supporters.
After this moment, the police were convinced that Puigdemont and his entourage were heading towards the parliament building, but the former ruler disappeared, in what the Mossos described as an ‘orchestrated deception’.
The authorities then set up a device on the roads to try and stop him, but to no avail.
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