The case of a rapper sentenced to jail for tweets attacking the monarchy and Spanish police and refusing to surrender continued to worry socialist Pedro Sánchez’s government on Friday.
Catalan artist Pablo Hasel was about to expire on Friday night the term that the judiciary had given him to volunteer to begin his prison sentence, confirming that he would not surrender.
“They will have to come and kidnap me, and it will also serve for the state to be portrayed for what it is: a false democracy,” Hasel said defiantly in a telephone interview with AFP, from his home in Lleida, Catalonia. (northeast).
– Government on the defensive –
Controversy erupted after his nine-month conviction for a crime glorifying terrorism for his posts published between 2014 and 2016, in which, for example, he summoned ‘shit mercenaries’ to police and accused them of torturing and murdering protesters and immigrants. .
The rapper said he will not allow authorities to “dictate what he can say”.
The case has become a headache for the left-wing government and especially for its majority partner, the Socialist Party, just hours before Sunday’s regional elections in Catalonia.
Several demonstrations in support of Hasel have taken place in Madrid and Barcelona in recent weeks, while 200 performers, including Spanish film stars such as Pedro Almodóvar and Javier Bardem, and music stars, such as Joan Manuel Serrat, have manifested at his favor.
The letter asked “to exclude such crimes from the Criminal Code, which restricts only the right to freedom of expression, but also to ideological and artistic freedom”.
The socialists’ minority partner in the government, the radical left of Podemos, has spoken out against the conviction of the rapper.
In defense on Monday, after the manifesto was announced, the government promised to propose “a review of the crimes associated with excesses in the exercise of freedom of expression” with the aim of imposing “deterrent” sentences and not jail time.
Government spokeswoman María Jesús Montero on Tuesday acknowledged that there was no “proportionality” in Hasel’s conviction.
– “Political court” –
But the reform promises to take time and cannot be applied in the rapper’s case.
His lawyer, Diego Herchhoren, appealed to the Audiencia Nacional, a Madrid high court dealing with complex issues.
But Herchhoren told AFP that this appeal is in principle not suspensory, so that his client’s detention process is maintained ‘a priori’.
The lawyer qualified the National Supreme Court as a “political court” and estimated that only the Spanish government could avoid his imprisonment.
Asked by AFP about the impending expiration of the deadline to appear, a court source declined to comment.
“We have nothing to say,” said a Justice Department source.
Hasel’s lawyer said the future will tell whether the Spanish government’s position against imprisonment is “real” or “it was just an election announcement”.
His case is reminiscent of that of the Balearic rapper Valtonyc, who left for Belgium hours before he went to prison in 2018 to serve a sentence for insulting the king, glorifying terrorism and threats in his songs.
Belgium has refused the extradition requested by Spain so far.
In the Catalan elections on Sunday, the socialists of Sánchez are seeking to replace the independence fighters who rule the wealthy region of 7.8 million people in power, three and a half years after an attempted secession that left painful wounds in the region and that continues to weigh on national politics. .