The lawyer for Catalan ministers Josep Rull and Jordi Turull has this morning presented their appeals against the order of preventive detention. Both accept the application article 155 of the Spanish Constitution. The aim is to be able to leave Estremera prison and stand as candidates for the 21st December Catalan elections.
The defence for Turull, Presidency minister, and Rull, Territory minister, have asked Spain's National Audience court to release them arguing that, like the rest of the members of the Catalan government, they've "expressly" accepted the measures of article 155, without promoting any "resistance".
In their appeals the two ministers ask the Appeals Chamber of the National Audience to revoke the order from judge Carmen Lamela for preventive detention without bail and apply the same criteria the Supreme Court used to leave Carme Forcadell, the Parliament's speaker, free on bail, alongside pro-independence members of the Parliament's Board.
Arguing the lack of justification to maintain the preventive custody, the defence says that both Rull and Turull "have expressly accepted the measures decreed under article 155 of the Constitution without effecting or promoting any kind of resistence to its application". They say that, as such, the "risk of recidivism is today completely null", saying that they have accepted the intervention despite "disagreeing politically with its contents and legitimacy".
As a specific example, the appeal notes that after the application of article 155, "no agreement has been adopted nor has any order been decreed either by the Catalan government, which held a meeting after the Parliament session on 27th October without adopting any agreement, nor by either of the ministers". They also say that "they opted to neither offer nor promote resistence to the new context, announcing on the contrary their intention to turn to the ballot box".
The text concludes that "there is no wish for, nor risk of, recidivism, but a commitment to maintain their legitimate political aspirations through a democratic electoral confrontation, with full respect for the political plurality which has to govern the election".
The defence's strategy also compares the situation with that of Carme Forcadell and the other deputies and the decisions taken by the Supreme Court who left them free on posting bail, 150,000€ (£133,000, $176,000) for the Speaker, 25,000€ (£22,000, $29,000) each for the others. The appeal says that the facts are "identical in the narrative and description of the actionable facts".