Fair Trials, the London-based NGO that monitors fair trials in accordance with international justice standards, has just released an international report criticising the provisional prison in Spain and the ambiguity of many laws, which end up provoking violations of freedom of expression. The report considers that the lack of alternative measures in the preventive prison continues to be a systemic problem in Spain without the authorities imposing any remedy and, in practice, they end up benefiting from this situation.
The report asks the Human Rights Council and the UN Working Group to recommend that Spain revoke articles of the Criminal Code that affect, above all, accusations of terrorism in an arbitrary manner, such as accusations to the young people of Altsasu by the public prosecutor and the general prosecutor, and a final sentence by the Appeal Chamber of the National Audience court, doubtlessly disproportionate in its judgement of up to 13 years of prison but in the which the crime of terrorism requested by the prosecution is excluded.
The preventive prison has recently become an Achilles' heel of Spanish democracy and it has also been considered disproportionate, in the case of Catalan political prisoners, who have been deprived of freedom when it was quite obvious that their capability for destroying of evidence was non-existent and there was ample scope for mechanisms to prevent any theoretical risk of escape, among other things because many of them attended the declaration in court knowing that they would be sent to prison. One of the most extreme cases of malpractice in the preventive prison is that of former president of Barça football club, Sandro Rosell, deprived of freedom for almost two years and, finally, declared innocent by the National Court.
We shall have to continue talking of freedom of expression in the next days days for the numerous cases in which the wrong end of the stick has been taken restricting freedoms. A restrictive interpretation of freedom of expression ends up creating a climate of fear, according to Amnesty International, who considers that the limitations are disproportionate in Spain.