MADRID: Thousands of people supporting a contested referendum to split Catalonia from Spain took to Barcelona’s streets amid an intensifying government crackdown on the independence vote that included the arrests of a dozen regional officials Wednesday and the seizure of 10 million ballot papers.
The arrests — the first involving Catalan officials since the campaign to hold an independence vote began in earnest in 2011 — prompted the regional government and some of its supporters to say casting a ballot was as much about dignity as whether to break away from Spain.
Regional Catalan officials so far have vowed to ignore a Constitutional Court order to suspend the Oct. 1 referendum while judges assess its legality.
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy warned them of “greater harm” if they don’t drop the referendum bid, which he called a “totalitarian act.”
“Disobedience of the law by a part of the political power is the opposite of democracy, it means an imposition, an injustice, the violation of people’s rights and an attack to democracy,” Rajoy said in a televised appearance on Wednesday night.
“If you care about the tranquility of most Catalans, give up this escalation of radicalism and disobedience,” the conservative leader said, addressing Catalan officials directly. “You are on time to avoid a greater harm.”
Catalan nationalists argue that self-determination is an inalienable right that can’t be curbed by any constitution. The prime minister’s determination to prevent the ballot has backing from the main Spanish opposition parties.
Some members of Rajoy’s conservative government have even referred to the standoff as democratic Spain’s greatest political crisis since 1981, a failed coup attempt in the country’s parliament that came only three years after the official end of Gen. Francisco Franco’s dictatorship.
Spanish Interior Ministry officials would not identify the arrested regional officials, saying the investigation was ongoing. The Catalan regional government confirmed that among them were Josep Maria Jove, secretary general of economic affairs, and Lluis Salvado, secretary of taxation. Jove is the No. 2 to the region’s vice president and economy chief, Oriol Junqueras.
The Catalonia branch of Spain’s High Court said Wednesday that some 20 people were being investigated for alleged disobedience, abuse of power and embezzlement related to the referendum. Police acting on a judge’s orders searched 42 premises, including six regional government offices, officials’ private offices and homes, as well as three companies in Barcelona, the court said in a statement.
The arrests risked stoking public anger in Catalonia, where pro-independence passions can run high. Several thousand independence supporters gathered to angrily protest the raids outside government offices in Barcelona, which is Catalonia’s capital. Some demonstrators sat down in the street to block police cars, while a few scuffled with police officers.
Later, protesters rejoiced when National Police officers left the headquarters of the anti-establishment CUP political party. The officers waited hours for a judge to sign off on a warrant to search the premises for referendum-related propaganda, but the permission never came.
Protests also occurred in other Catalan towns and in Spain’s capital, Madrid. There were no reports of arrests and one person was reported injured, according to the regional police.
At the demonstration outside the Catalan regional ministry of economy, protester Charo Rovira said she felt sad at the turn of events.
“Catalonia is practically in a state of siege,” she said. She added that the arrested politicians were merely acting according to the will of the people.
Catalonia’s president, Carles Puigdemont, blasted the police operations as “unlawful” and accused the national government of adopting a “totalitarian attitude.” He accused Madrid of bringing a state of emergency to Catalonia and of effectively canceling the northeastern region’s self-rule.
His televised statement came as Spain’s Finance Ministry said it was imposing further controls over the Catalan government’s finances to ensure no public money is used for the referendum.
Finance Minister Cristobal Montoro’s order means that virtually all of Catalonia’s public spending will be handled in Madrid and that no credits could be requested for non-essential payments.
Catalonia represents a fifth of Spain’s 1.1-trillion-euro ($1.32 trillion) economy and enjoys wide self-government authority, although key areas such as infrastructure and taxes are in the hands of central authorities. The region’s 7.5 million inhabitants overwhelmingly favor holding a referendum, but are roughly evenly divided over independence.
As part of the crackdown, police confiscated nearly 10 million ballot papers, the Interior Ministry said. Polling station signs and documents for election officers were also seized during a raid on a warehouse in a small town outside Barcelona.
“Today the government of Rajoy has crossed a very dangerous red line,” Jordi Sanchez, president of Catalan National Assembly, a civic group leading the independence drive said. “We will do all we can for democracy and freedom to prevail.”
Barcelona Football Club, which is popular around the world, waded into the controversy, too. The soccer team said it “condemns any act that may impede the free exercise of (democratic) rights” and vowed to “continue to support the will of the majority of Catalan people, and will do so in a civil, peaceful, and exemplary way.”
Spain’s Interior Ministry canceled time off and scheduled leave for Civil Guard and National Police officers who are being deployed to ensure the vote doesn’t happen. It gave no details on the number of agents involved.
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AP photographer Emilio Morenatti and videographer Hernan Munoz contributed from Barcelona. Barry Hatton contributed from Lisbon, Portugal.
Clash over Catalan vote heats up in Spain as police swoop in
Clash over Catalan vote heats up in Spain as police swoop in
German president urges unity after ‘dark shadow’ of Christmas market attack
- Steinmeier recognized that there was a “great deal of dissatisfaction about politics” in Germany but insisted that “our democracy is and remains strong”
BERLIN: Germany’s president said Tuesday that a deadly car-ramming attack on a Christmas market had cast a “dark shadow” over this year’s celebrations but urged the nation not to be driven apart by extremists.
In his traditional Christmas address, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier sought to issue a message of healing four days after the brutal attack in the eastern city of Magdeburg killed five people and left over 200 wounded.
“A dark shadow hangs over this Christmas,” said the head of state, pointing to the “pain, horror and bewilderment over what happened in Magdeburg just a few days before Christmas.”
He made a call for national unity as a debate about security and immigration is flaring again: “Hatred and violence must not have the final word. Let’s not allow ourselves to be driven apart. Let’s stand together.”
His words came a day after the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) held what it called a memorial rally for the victims in Magdeburg, where one speaker demanded that Germany “must close the borders.”
Nearby an anti-extremist initiative was held under the motto “Don’t Give Hate a Chance.”
Steinmeier recognized that there was a “great deal of dissatisfaction about politics” in Germany but insisted that “our democracy is and remains strong.”
A Saudi doctor, Taleb Al-Abdulmohsen, 50, was arrested Friday at the scene of the attack in which a rented SUV plowed at high speed through the crowd of revellers, bringing death and chaos to the festive event.
His motive still remains unclear, days after Germany’s deadliest attack in years.
Abdulmohsen has in his many online posts voiced strongly anti-Islam views, anger at German authorities and support for far-right conspiracy narratives on the “Islamization” of Europe.
News outlet Der Spiegel reported he wrote on social media platform X in May that he expected to die “this year” and was seeking “justice” at any cost.
Investigators found his will in the BMW that he used in the attack, the outlet said — he stated that everything he owned was to go to the German Red Cross, and it contained no political messages.
Die Welt daily, citing unnamed security sources, said that Abdulmohsen had been treated for a mental illness in the past, thought this was not immediately confirmed by authorities.
The attack has fueled an already bitter debate on migration and security in Germany, two months before national elections and with the far-right AfD party riding high in opinion polls.
The government is facing mounting questions about possible errors and missed warnings about Abdulmohsen, who was arrested next to the battered BMW sports utility vehicle.
Saudi Arabia said it had repeatedly warned Germany about its citizen, who came to Germany in 2006 and was granted refugee status 10 years later.
A source close to the Saudi government told AFP that the kingdom had sought his extradition.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government has pledged to fully investigate whether there were security lapses before the attack.
The Saudi suspect has been remanded in custody in a top-security facility on five counts of murder and 205 of attempted murder, prosecutors said, but not so far on terrorism-related charges.
German Christmas markets have been specially secured since a jihadist attacker rammed a truck through a Berlin Christmas market in 2016, killing 13 people.
The Magdeburg event too had been shielded by barricades, but the attacker managed to exploit a five-meter gap when he steered the car into the site and then raced into the unsuspecting crowd.
Steinmeier offered his condolences for relatives of those injured and killed “in such a terrible way” — when the attack killed a nine-year-old boy and four women aged 45 to 75.
“You are not alone in your pain,” he told the hundreds of affected families. “The people throughout our country feel for you and mourn with you.”
Legendary drug lord Fabio Ochoa is deported to Colombia after spending two decades in US prisons
- Ochoa’s name has faded from popular memory as Mexican drug traffickers take center stage in the global drug trade
BOGOTÁ, Colombia: One of Colombia’s legendary drug lords and a key operator of the Medellin cartel has been deported back to the South American country, after serving 25 years of a 30-year prison sentence in the United States.
Fabio Ochoa arrived in Bogota’s El Dorado airport on a deportation flight on Monday, wearing a grey sweatshirt and carrying his personal belongings in a plastic bag.
After stepping out of the plane, the former cartel boss was met by immigration officials in bullet proof vests. There were no police on site to detain him — an indication he may not have any pending cases in Colombian courts.
In a brief statement, Colombia’s national immigration agency said Ochoa should be able to enter Colombia “without any problems,” once he is cleared by immigration officers who will check for any outstanding cases against the former drug trafficker.
Ochoa, 67, and his older brothers amassed a fortune when cocaine started flooding the US in the late 1970s and early 1980s, according to US authorities, to the point that in 1987 they were included in the Forbes Magazine’s list of billionaires.
Living in Miami, Ochoa ran a distribution center for the cocaine cartel once headed by Pablo Escobar. Escobar died in a shootout with authorities in Medellin in 1993.
Ochoa was first indicted in the US for his alleged role in the 1986 killing of Barry Seal, an American pilot who flew cocaine flights for the Medellin cartel, but became an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Along with his two older brothers, Juan David and Jorge Luis, Ochoa turned himself in to Colombian authorities in the early 1990s under a deal in which they avoided being extradited to the US
The three brothers were released from prison in 1996, but Ochoa was arrested again three years later for drug trafficking and was extradited to the US in 2001 in response to an indictment in Miami naming him and more than 40 people as part of a drug smuggling conspiracy.
He was the only suspect in that group who opted to go to trial, resulting in his conviction and a 30-year sentence. The other defendants got much lighter prison terms because most of them cooperated with the government.
Ochoa’s name has faded from popular memory as Mexican drug traffickers take center stage in the global drug trade.
But the former member of the Medellin cartel was recently depicted in the Netflix series Griselda, where he first fights the plucky businesswoman Griselda Blanco for control of Miami’s cocaine market, and then makes an alliance with the drug trafficker, played by Sofia Vergara.
Ochoa is also depicted in the Netflix series Narcos, as the youngest son of an elite Medellin family that is into ranching and horse breeding and cuts a sharp contrast with Escobar, who came from more humble roots.
Richard Gregorie, a retired assistant US attorney who was on the prosecution team that convicted Ochoa, said authorities were never able to seize all of the Ochoa family’s illicit drug proceeds and he expects that the former mafia boss will have a welcome return home.
“He won’t be retiring a poor man, that’s for sure,” Gregorie told The Associated Press earlier this month.
Bill Clinton is hospitalized with a fever but in good spirits, spokesperson says
- “He remains in good spirits and deeply appreciates the excellent care he is receiving,” Urena said
WASHINGTON: Former President Bill Clinton was admitted Monday to Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington after developing a fever.
The 78-year-old was admitted in the “afternoon for testing and observation,” Angel Urena, Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, said in a statement.
“He remains in good spirits and deeply appreciates the excellent care he is receiving,” Urena said.
Clinton, a Democrat who served two terms as president from January 1993 until January 2001, addressed the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this summer and campaigned ahead of November’s election for the unsuccessful White House bid of Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
Greek lawyers call for further investigation into 2023 deadly shipwreck
- “The case file contains serious gaps and omissions,” they said in a statement, adding that the captain and the crew of the coast guard vessel monitoring the migrant ship had been summoned by the court, but not the coast guard officials supervising them
ATHENS: Greek lawyers representing the survivors and victims of a deadly 2023 shipwreck said on Monday a naval court needed to examine more evidence after a preliminary investigation failed to shed light on the case.
Hundreds died on June 14, 2023, when an overcrowded fishing trawler, monitored by the Greek coast guard for several hours, capsized and sank in international waters off the southwestern Greek coastal town of Pylos.
A local naval court, which opened a criminal investigation last year, has concluded a preliminary investigation and referred the case to a chief prosecutor, the lawyers said on Monday, adding they had reviewed the evidence examined by the court so far.
“The case file contains serious gaps and omissions,” they said in a statement, adding that the captain and the crew of the coast guard vessel monitoring the migrant ship had been summoned by the court, but not the coast guard officials supervising them.
Evidence, including the record of communications between the officials involved in the operation, was not included in the case file, they added.
“The absence of any investigation into the responsibilities of the competent search and rescue bodies and the leadership of the Greek coast guard is deafening,” they said.
The chief prosecutor will decide if and how the probe will progress.
Under Greek law, prosecutors are not allowed to comment on ongoing investigations.
The vessel, which had set off from Libya, was carrying up to 700 Pakistani, Syrian and Egyptian migrants bound for Italy. Only 104 people were rescued and 82 bodies found.
Greece’s coast guard has denied any role in the sinking, which was one of the deadliest boat disasters in the Mediterranean Sea.
Mozambique death toll from Cyclone Chido rises to 120
- The cyclone not only ravaged Mayotte’s fragile infrastructure but also laid bare deep-seated tensions between the island’s residents and its large migrant population
MUPATO: The death toll from Cyclone Chido in Mozambique rose by 26 to at least 120, the southern African country’s disaster risk body said on Monday.
The number of those injured also rose to nearly 900 after the cyclone hit the country on December 15, a day after it had devastated the French Indian Ocean archipelago of Mayotte.
The cyclone not only ravaged Mayotte’s fragile infrastructure but also laid bare deep-seated tensions between the island’s residents and its large migrant population.
Thousands of people who have entered the island illegally bore the brunt of the storm that tore through the Indian Ocean archipelago. Authorities in Mayotte, France’s poorest territory, said many avoided emergency shelters out of fear of deportation, leaving them, and the shantytowns they live in, even more vulnerable to the cyclone’s devastation.
Still, some frustrated legal residents have accused the government of channeling scarce resources to migrants at their expense.
“I can’t take it anymore. Just to have water is complicated,” said Fatima on Saturday, a 46-year-old mother of five whose family has struggled to find clean water since the storm.
Fatima, who only gave her first name because her family is known locally, added that “the island can’t support the people living in it, let alone allow more to come.”
Mayotte, a French department located between Madagascar and mainland Africa, has a population of 320,000, including an estimated 100,000 migrants, most of whom have arrived from the nearby Comoros Islands, just 70 kilometers away.
The archipelago’s fragile public services, designed for a much smaller population, have been overwhelmed.
“The problems of Mayotte cannot be solved without addressing illegal immigration,” French President Emmanuel Macron said during his visit this week, acknowledging the challenges posed by the island’s rapid population growth,
“Despite the state’s investments, migratory pressure has made everything explode,” he added.
The cyclone further exacerbated the island’s issues after destroying homes, schools, and infrastructure.
Though the official death toll remains 35, authorities say that any estimates are likely major undercounts, with hundreds and possibly thousands feared dead. Meanwhile, the number of seriously injured has risen to 78.
