Spain's public prosecution service has activated the procedure to review the provisional detention of pro-independence civil society leaders Jordi Cuixart and Jordi Sànchez, should the Supreme Court not announce its verdicts in their trial before next Wednesday, 16th October. That day will mark two years since they were sent into pretrial detention, the maximum period for an initial order permissible by law. At that point, the relevant court will have to order an extension if it wishes to keep them in custody, or let them go free.
In their filing today, the prosecutor notes the case has already gone to trial and the defendants are awaiting the court's verdicts. They write that "it would violate the right to personal liberty in the case that their term of provisional detention were to be extended beyond the legally permitted limit without, in advance, an order having been issued which expressly extends the provisional detention".
They say that although the law doesn't explicitly require the extension to be ordered before the original period expires, there is nonetheless a "logical requirement" that this should occur.
Sources from Cuixart and Sànchez's defence teams expect they'll be summonsed in the coming days to a hearing on the matter and that their clients will be able to follow it from their prison in Catalonia.
This imminent issue has been commonly cited as an argument by those, the majority of commentators, who believe the verdicts are likely to come out in the very near future.