Supreme Court magistrate Pablo Llarena has issued a national arrest warrant against Clara Ponsatí after the former Minister of Education of the Generalitat during the process She has not justified her failure to appear to testify for the crime of disobedience for which she is being prosecuted.
The examining magistrate of the investigation into the 1-O In the Supreme Court, he affirms that everything indicates that Ponsatí “has voluntarily and unjustifiably neglected the judicial summons” for which reason he agrees to his national detention so that after his arrest he can take a statement. The arrest warrant, recalls the judge, would be without effect if he appears before the investigator, as has already happened with two other defendants from the process, Meritxell Serret y Anna Gabriel.
Ponsatí was personally summoned to appear before Llarena on April 24. She did not appear in the Supreme Court and her defense justified that she Ponsatí was part of two commissions of the European Parliament, one of them as substitute member. In her order, Llarena explains that, although the aforementioned letter did not specify that Ponsatí’s failure to appear was motivated by his attendance at these parliamentary committees, his defense “suggested the incompatibility of both tasks.”
Llarena’s order explains that the law contemplates the possibility of converting a summons into detention when the aforementioned does not justify a legitimate cause that prevents him from appearing, something that Ponsatí has not done.
On the one hand, because the summons -indicates the judge- was for the morning of April 24, while the parliamentary functions that his defense alleges were scheduled for the afternoon of that date, “reasonably compatible by requesting videoconference or even using of the existing media Brussels y Madrid“.