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A serious mistake by CNI (the Spanish intelligence agency) is further complicating the extradition warrant issued by Spain to Germany for the Catalan president in exile, Carles Puigdemont. According to Spanish online newspaper El Independiente, "an excess of euphoria and the need to chalk up a triumph" meant the CNI themselves, as well as the Spanish government, revealed their participation in tracking Puigdemont and the choice of Germany as the country where the arrest would take place. The newspaper reports that this has made the judges in Schleswig-Holstein uncomfortable, feeling they were being used by the Spanish authorities.

"That morning, details of the operation started to leak from the Comisaría General de Información and the CNI: around 20 agents took part, 12 of them members of the secret services; the car Puigdemont was travelling in with four others at the moment of his arrest (a Renault Espace with Belgian licence plate) had been fitted with a beacon; a geolocation device in the mobile of one of the ex-president's companions was used to monitor the vehicle's journey through 4 countries at all times; it was even said that CNI agents were present at the arrest by German police," El Independiente writes.

According to this account, there are problems with the legality of the CNI's actions on foreign territory without legal orders. The Belgian courts have already opened an investigation into this question. A second problem is that it was taken for granted that Germany would extradite Puigdemont, that it would be easy in comparison to Belgium or the United Kingdom. All of this has caused unease among the German judges.