There were numerous political reactions to the sensational arrest of the former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, who on his arrival in Alghero found border police officers waiting for him who took him into custody and took him to the Bancali prison.
The first comes from the mayor of Alghero Mario Conoci , he himself had invited the independence leader to the city to participate in an international event dedicated to Catalan culture and folklore.
The mayor speaks of a "very serious" episode, "and the fact that it took place in Alghero is even more painful". Regarding the event, “it will go ahead with an even more vindictive spirit, in the light of this political act. As we said in 2017, the process of self-determination of a people cannot be repressed by force and managed through the courts ”.
Puigdemont should also have met the President of the Regional Council: "The deep friendship that unites Sardinia and the city of Alghero in a fraternal and indissoluble bond, particularly with Catalonia, leads me to invoke a political solution to the affair that will safeguard respect autonomy as a constitutionally guaranteed principle and as a prerequisite for the free coexistence of different identities and cultures, in the context of a Europe of Peoples and Nations ", says Michele Pais .
An arrest that "saddens and pains the entire Sardinian people", comments the president of the Psd'Az Antonio Moro . "It deadens the independence tradition and the centenary history of the Sardinian Action Party, which has always been an ally of the parties and movements that fight for self-government in Catalonia and in other stateless nations".
Matteo Salvini also condemns the episode: "I do not enter into the merits of internal events in other states, but we struggle to arrest Italian criminals and arrest parliamentarians from other countries", he says. Germany have said no to extradition because it is a political crime. I hope that Italy will not be the protagonist of justice or revenge at the request of other countries ".
A "very serious wound to the Italian and European rule of law" for the regional coordinator of the League in Sardinia Eugenio Zoffili . "The Spanish justice condemned Carles Puigdemont on the basis of a crime - the crime of sedition - which does not exist in any democratic order and which represents a blatantly persecutory and strictly political charge", he says, recalling that "the referendum of October 1, 2017 was approved by a legitimately elected body, in full consistency with the electoral mandate conferred by Catalan citizens ". “For this reason - adds Zoffili - Germany has already denied extradition in a circumstance similar to the one we are experiencing today. The same should be done by Italian justice ”.
Even the Party of Sardinians expresses "indignation" at the arrest of President Puigdemont and calls "the Sardinian national institutions and all the democratic political forces that care about the protection of individual rights, the protection of the free expression of thought at heart , sharing the principles of justice and freedom that animate the political struggle for the self-determination of peoples and the protection of the legitimate aspirations of stateless nations ”.
A comment also comes from the senators of the Democratic Party Giovanni Marilotti and Roberto Rampi: "The news of the arrest at the airport, in Alghero, of the Catalan MEP Carles Puigdemont arrives like a bolt from the blue to break the principle of free movement of citizen representatives. The act taken by the Italian border police must immediately be examined by the judiciary, in the hope that the right of the former Catalan president to freely visit the countries of the European Union, in the exercise of his mandate, will be recognized. upon his arrival in Sardinia, at the invitation of the mayor of Alghero, he also represents a sort of institutional disgrace ", they affirm.
The Free Sardigna Movement also expressed its solidarity with the Catalan president: "Once again - reads a note - the reasons for the repression of national states have won over the right to self-determination of peoples, a right sanctioned and reaffirmed by the UN and by international law. Freedom for Puigdemont and for all political prisoners. Solidarity with the struggles of the Catalan people for the right to independence ”.
(Unioneonline / L)