The Provincial Court wants to investigate whether the baton charges on 1-O in Barcelona were disproportionate
The Provincial Court orders an investigation to determine whether the National Police disobeyed orders to use proportional force from the High Court of Justice of Catalonia on 1-O
The Provincial Court of Barcelona has ordered that the case on the baton charges at the Fundació Trini Jove in Barcelona on 1 October 2017 be reopened. Investigating court number 7 had decided to temporarily file the case, but both the Barcelona Town Hall and the Generalitat had appealed it and now the Provincial Court has ordered its investigation.
In its interlocutory order, the court refuses to close investigations on specific centres until the orders of the commanders - the main proceedings - are made clear: whether or not the least amount of force, as was ordered by the High Court of Catalonia had ordered, was used, or if there was a disproportionate use of the same.
"The investigating magistrate must carry out a 'complete investigation of what has happened to explain if the police action was limited to the strict fulfilment of what was ordered by the High Court of Justice using the minimum necessary amount of force or if there was a disproportionate use of violence as, in said case, it would not fall under the fulfilment of a judiciary order."
According to the Provincial Court of Barcelona, the actions on 1-O must be treated as a whole and not as separate pieces. This would involve reopening all filed cases.
"This investigation cannot be partial and limited to each centre. It must be global, as the analysis of the orders issued by the people in charge of the joint operation and each of the operations and their executions will allow to highlight whether or not the events constitute criminal offences, as the parties to the prosecution state and according to the investigating magistrate of the case."
To this end, the court added:
"From a purely procedural point of view, there is no grounds to dismiss each of these pieces separately; rather, one of the decisions established in article 779 of the Criminal Proceedings Law must be adopted with regard to the main case."
Related interactive resource: The keys of the Catalan independence trial
Out of the 29 proceedings related to the case, a dozen have been temporarily filed as it was concluded that there were no videos demonstrating the use of force; however, in the last few days, two have been reopened: this one, with regard to the Fundació Trino Jove and, on 5 March, when the Provincial Court of Barcelona accepted to reopened the case for the baton charges at the Escola Estel in Barcelona for "disproportionate use" of police force.
