Esquerra Republicana MEP has stated in a letter to the European Commission and the United Nations that the threats made against prison officials by the Spanish court involve a violation of the separation of powers and an obvious discrimination of certain prisoners

In a brief communiqué to the press, the Spanish Supreme Court warned yesterday that it would identify and criminally prosecute those officials of Catalan prison parole boards supporting the decision to allow political prisoners to spend confinement home while the health crisis lasts.

Given the gravity of the threats, MEP Diana Riba this morning sent a letter to the Commissioner of Justice Didier Reynders and to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, in which she reports the facts. Ms Riba emphasizes that the Supreme Court is violating separation of powers; threatens officials pre-emptively; and obviously discriminates against nine prisoners out of the one hundred plus whose conditional release has been approved by Article 100.2 of Spain’s Prison Regulations, for which the Esquerra MEP demands that the case be duly investigated.

It should be remembered that Michelle Bachelet asked governments last week to study how they could release “low-risk offenders,” stressing that “governments should release every person detained without sufficient legal basis, including political prisoners and others detained simply for expressing critical or dissenting views.”