Why is Carles Puigdemont not extradited to Spain?

12 comments

1. Belgium is very much against extraditing anyone to Spain. They do not forget when Spain refused to extradite Léon Degrelle.

2. I dunno. Most regular Belgians dont really give a fuck about Puigdemont and never asked for him to be here nor stay here.

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4. The oficial reason is something like according to their legislation, he hasn’t done anything illegal.

5. In spain it is illegal to strive for independence of your region, in belgium it is not. Let him come to the netherlands we have 80 years experience in succesfully getting rid of a spanish king

6. The Catalan politicians and other independence activists in Switzerland also haven’t been extradited. The french, German, Italian, Finnish and Danish authorities also have refused to extradite them to spain. The main reason at least in Finland, Belgium, Denmark and Germany is that they have not commited any crime compatible with their legislation and that these countries, after reviewing the case considered neither Puigdemont nor the other exilees would receive a fair judgement in spain and that they may even face torture or mistreatement

7. At first, the Spanish judge Llarena in charge of the case, kept making requests for him to be extradited for military rebellion and the judges in Belgium, Germany, etc. saw that this was bs and denied the extradition.

   Of course, Llarena could have asked him to be extradited for sedition, but then he wouldn’t have been able to judge him for military rebellion, so he didn’t send a request for that.

   Then the ones not exiled where judged for military rebellion and acquited of those charges by other Spanish judges (who would have thunk).

   In the meantime Puigdemont become European PM and got immunity so he couldn’t be extradited anymore. He kept the position until a year ago, but afaik no more extradition requests were done since then.

   Now there was an amnesty law but surprise Llarena decided that it doesn’t apply to Puigdemont so he try to arrest him last month when he came to do a speech.

8. Belgium believes that Spain wants to prosecute Puigdemont for political reasons, and it is not allowed under Belgian law to extradite someone for political crimes.

   The Flemish nationalist parties are particularly opposed to his extradition since one of their core views is that a region should have the right to independence if the population wants it. Since Spain does not want to hold a referendum on this, they believe the country does not respect the democratic rights of its citizens.

9. The two largest political parties in Flanders(and usually of all of Belgium) are Flemish nationalist parties that want Flemish independence from Belgium. So they already have a big reason not to throw a fellow independist under the bus. Belgium and its predecessors also have a long history of living under a foreign power, of whom Spain was one of the worst, so generally there’s not exactly much motive to appeal to do what they demand.

   In a more legal sense, separatism is not seen as a criminal offence and there’s little trust that he’d get a fair trial in Spain.

10. As a non-citizen resident of Spain, I don’t particularly want him back. I only recently heard of him because he snuck back in, gave a separatist speech and snuck out again. I can live with that every few years.

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12. Because no one outside of Serbia, Azerbaijan, China and Spain believe in the holy religion of “territorial integrity” over self-determination