Spanish police make ludicrous claim Russia plotted to invade Catalonia
Spanish paramilitary police are making ludicrous, baseless
allegations linking Russia, imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange and
the 2017 referendum on Catalan independence from Spain.
In a major operation across Catalonia on Wednesday, the paramilitary
Civil Guard arrested 21 people, mostly businessmen and associates linked to the
Catalan secessionists. They are accused of misuse of public funds, abuse of
office, money laundering and diverting public funds to Belgium, where exiled
former regional Catalan premier Carles Puigdemont resides. Most are linked to
the pro-secessionist protest platform Tsunami Democràtic.
Tsunami Democràtic’s app played an important role in
mobilising protesters after a show trial sentenced nine Catalan nationalist
politicians to dozens of years in prison over the referendum.
The alleged network supposedly misappropriated funds from
the Barcelona provincial body, the Diputació of Barcelona, to finance Tsunami
Democràtic, relationships with Russia and an alleged property sale, to the tune
of €1 million. Part of these funds allegedly went to two foundations linked to
secessionist parties, and from there to finance the Catalan referendum.
The probe then alleges that Russia offered Puigdemont troops
in 2017. The only material they cited as proof of this allegation is a
transcript conversation between two former officials of Catalan secessionist
parties, Víctor Terradellas and Xavier Vendrell. The Civil Guard provided no
evidence of Russian involvement whatsoever besides what it alleges that it
heard by spying on Terradellas.
Citing this conversation, judge Joaquín Aguirre claims that
“Terradellas explained that the chief of the [Russia] group had offered on
October 24, 2017 to Carles Puigdemont to deploy 10,000 soldiers and pay all the
Catalan debt. […] The Russian group wanted to make Catalonia a country like
Switzerland.” According to this account, Puigdemont withdrew from the plan at
the last minute.
Judge Aguirre commented: “If he had accepted, the events
would probably have been tragic and would have triggered an armed conflict in
the [Spanish] state with an unknown number of fatalities.”
Also mentioned are former NSA analyst and whistleblower
Edward Snowden and imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange. Assange is
currently imprisoned in a London jail cell, facing an extradition trial to send
him to the US to face life imprisonment in a US supermax prison for exposing
the war crimes, coups and sordid intrigues of the imperialist powers.
The probe alleges that Assange met one of those arrested in
the operation, Oriol Soler, considered by Madrid as one of the top
communication strategists of the Catalan secessionist movement, in November
2017.
According to the Civil Guard, “the Kremlin government”,
Assange, Snowden, as well as “people close to Vladimir Putin” such as editor
Margarita Simonyan and “Kremlin-controlled media like Russia Today and Sputnik”
all conspired with the Catalan government “to internationalize the conflict,
obtaining the support of third countries willing to recognize Catalonia as a country
in case it got to the point of declaring independence.”
Assange is one of the most spied-upon people on earth, but
the Civil Guard failed to provide any evidence of a conspiracy between Assange
and Soler.
The whole case is ludicrous, serving a number of purposes.
It is a further attack on democratic rights of the accused
and of the Catalan nationalists, ultimately aiming to intimidate the emerging
movement of the working class and create a precedent for far broader
victimisations.
The ruling class is terrified at the initial expression of
growing working class struggles throughout the continent against its policy of
malign neglect in letting COVID-19 spread. In Greece, students have occupied
schools. In Spain, Germany and France, nurses have gone on strike, as well as
public transport workers. In Madrid, protests against restrictions of mobility
in working class districts have emerged.
The operation also aims to serve as a distraction from the
Socialist Party-Podemos government’s policy of herd immunity which is provoking
a mass health catastrophe. Infection rates are over 20,000 a day, ICUs are
collapsing as death rates spiked to over 250 a day last week, the highest
number of victims to be reported since May. This brings the official toll to
35,298, although the real figure may be closer to 60,000, according to the
Mortality Monitoring System.
Finally, the operations also aim to further escalate
tensions with nuclear-armed Russia, in the context of the US elections and
widespread expectations in Europe of a victory of Democratic candidate Joe
Biden. The Democratic party’s opposition to Trump has been centered on
attacking Trump, the Republican candidate, for being “soft” on Russia.
On Thursday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria
Zakharova ridiculed the operation, warning that relations with Spain could
become “more complicated” and “may be damaged”. She explained that the claims
had come from Catalan secessionists, who made up the story to “draw the
attention of the world community to their confrontation with the Spanish
state.”
Zakharova also drew attention to the name of the operation,
which the Civil Guard provocatively claimed was named “Operation Volhov.”
Volhov was the name of a battle in the Soviet Union during World War II between
fascist Spain’s Blue Division and Soviet forces. This infantry division of
fascist volunteers was sent by Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco to
support Nazi Germany in its war of extermination against the Soviet Union,
which left nearly 27 million dead.
The fact that the Spanish police and judiciary concocted
such a ludicrous story, which could be used to provide a case for war against a
nuclear-armed state, speaks to the enormous dangers confronting the working
class. Moreover, the fact that they received a free pass to promote this story
in the media speaks volumes about what is sometimes passed off as the ‘left’ in
Spain, principally the Podemos party.
The Civil Guards knew Podemos would not mobilise any
opposition to its operations and that it could not only concoct this story but
name it after the fascist Blue Division’s battles. They are fully aware that
Podemos are tools of the ruling class, including of its re-legitimization of
fascist politics and the far-right Vox party. Podemos actively participated in
the anti-Catalan campaign, calling for acceptance of the verdict against
Catalan officials, and supported police repression of mass protests.
On Friday, Podemos spokesperson in parliament Jaume Asens
made empty protests to the Ministry of Interior, saying “it’s unacceptable that
today we have Francoists in the Civil Guard,” apparently alluding to the name
of the operation. Asens complained that the name is “improper” for a
“democratic state like Spain. “
The day before, Asens weakly raised the possibility of a
plot by “sections of the police and the judiciary, that works against the
Government,” emphasising the timing of the operation, days before the vote on
the budget in which the PSOE-Podemos government needs the support of the
Catalan secessionists.
The Interior Ministry dismissed his remarks, saying that
“there are different versions” of the name of the operation, apparently implying
that it was a typo, and told the PSOE and Podemos to respect the judicial probe
as a “sign of independence and separation of powers.”
While most of the Madrid-based media uncritically reported
the operation and cited the judge’s probe, and Podemos minimised the
significance of the operation, the case became the laughingstock on social
media. Twitter was full of mocking comments, memes and Tweets about the case.
The glaring exceptions on Twitter are the NATO operatives of
the Integrity Initiative, a network of UK and international military and
intelligence operatives, academics and journalists spreading anti-Russia
propaganda. In 2018, their campaigns successfully removed a potential military
advisor to the PSOE government, considered too “pro-Russian.”
The so-called “Spanish cluster” members of Integrity
Initiative have been activated to promote the bizarre operation. One of its
members, Daniel Iriarte claimed that opposition to these baseless allegations
was “a classical example of Russian disinformation technique called
‘hahaganda’: each time Russia comes out badly from an event, they look at the
most extreme or bizarre example, its laughed at, ridiculed and then the WHOLE
[story] categorised as absurd.”
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