The case of a rapper sentenced to prison for tweeting in which he attacked the Spanish monarchy and police forces and refusing to surrender continued to cause headaches for the Socialist Pedro Sánchez government on Friday.
On the verge of expiring on Friday night the term given to him by the justice to appear voluntarily to start his prison sentence, the Catalan artist Pablo Hasel confirmed that he will not surrender.
“He will have to come and kidnap me and he will also serve to portray the state for what it is: a false democracy,” Hasel defiantly said in a telephone interview with AFP at his home in Lleida, Catalonia. (northeast).
– Government on the defensive –
Controversy erupted after he was sentenced to nine months for a crime of glorifying terrorism for his messages published between 2014 and 2016, in which he called, for example, “shit mercenaries” to police forces and accused them of torture and murder. protesters and immigrants.
The rapper said he would not allow authorities to “dictate what he could say.”
The case became a headache for the left-wing government and, above all, 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 recent weeks in Madrid and Barcelona, while 200 artists, including Spanish film stars such as Pedro Almodóvar and Javier Bardem, and music stars such as Joan Manuel Serrat, have signed a favor manifesto.
The letter called for “these types of crimes to be expelled from the Criminal Code, which limits only the right, not only to freedom of expression, but also to ideological and artistic freedom.”
The minority partner of the Socialists in government, the radical left of Podemos, has stated its opposition to the conviction against the rapper.
Defensively, the government promised on Monday, after the manifesto was known, that it would propose “a review of crimes related to excesses in the exercise of freedom of expression”, in order to impose “dissuasive” punishments and not imprisonment.
Government spokeswoman María Jesús Montero acknowledged on Tuesday that there was “no proportionality” in Hasel’s conviction.
– “Political court” –
But the reform promises to take time and cannot be applied to the rapper.
His lawyer, Diego Herchhoren, appealed to the Audiencia Nacional, a high court in Madrid that deals with complex issues.
But Herchhoren told AFP that, in principle, this appeal is not suspensive, so the process of imprisoning his client is maintained “a priori”.
Describing the High National Court as a “political court”, the lawyer estimated that only the Spanish government could avoid his imprisonment.
Asked by AFP about the imminent expiry of the submission deadline, a court source declined to comment.
“We have nothing to say,” said a source in the Ministry of Justice.
Hasel’s lawyer said the future would tell whether the Spanish government’s position against the prison sentence was “real” or “it was simply an election announcement.”
His case is reminiscent of that of the Balearic rapper Valtonyc, who in 2018 left for Belgium a few hours before going to prison to serve a sentence for insulting the king, glorifying terrorism and threats in his songs.
Belgium has so far rejected Spain’s extradition.
In Sunday’s Catalan elections, Sánchez’s Socialists are trying to replace the pro-independence leaders who rule the 7.8 million-strong region in power, three and a half years after a secession attempt that left painful wounds in the region and continues to weigh on national policy. .