El Nacional: The Spanish Civil Guard link Junqueras with the organisation of foreign observers for 1-O

The is a translation of an article from Catalan newspaper El Nacional entitled “La Guàrdia Civil vincula Junqueras amb l’organització d’observadors de l’1-O“. El Nacional publishes some of their own articles in English here.

A Civil Guard report also links Vice President Oriol Junqueras, currently in prison, with the organisation of people who attended the independence referendum held on 1 October last year as international observers. Until now, the organisation and payment for observers had been attributed to the Ministry of Home Affairs led by Raül Romeva.

It comes from one of the latest reports which the armed body has referred to Barcelona’s Instructional Court No. 13, in which WhatsApp conversations from some of those arrested during the operation on 20 October 2017 are analysed. According to this document, the link is established from conversations which Francesc Sutrias, who was Director of the Government Estate, held with Oriol Junqueras.

The Nokia telephone seized from Sutrias in his home in Rubí contained WhatsApp messages with the Republican leader in which he commented that he had received an official request from a professional association of judges from Brazil to attend as observers and asked Junqueras who he should direct them to. He responded to this by saying he should speak to Juncà.

“Who do I direct them to? To Juncà and he will share out the work?”, Francesc Sutrias says in his text, to which the jailed Vice President responds with “yes”. Lluís Juncà was the Director of the Office of the Vice President of the Generalitat.

After this conversation, Sutrias followed the instructions which Junqueras had given him and kept in contact with Lluís Juncà by WhatsApp, in which he comments that Oriol had told him to speak with him in relation to the observers.

According to the Civil Guard, it can be deduced from these conversations that “Oriol Junqueras gave instructions to Francesc Sutrias for the organisation of the [international] observers” who attended the 1 October referendum. At least, according to the report, in the participation of “a professional association of judges from Brazil”.