MADRID: The Spanish Supreme Court on Thursday said it had closed a treason investigation against Catalonia\u2019s exiled separatist figurehead Carles Puigdemont over alleged Russian interference in the region\u2019s failed 2017 secession bid.
\nThe worst crisis Spain had experienced in decades saw the wealthy northeastern region hold a secession referendum and proclaim a short-lived declaration of independence whose aftershocks continue to reverberate.
\nA judge from a lower court placed Puigdemont under investigation for high treason to determine whether he had contacts with the Kremlin or tried to gain Russian support for Catalan independence in return for financial compensation.
\nThe Supreme Court said in a statement it had \u201cdecided to close the proceedings\u201d opened into the \u201calleged Russian interference in the Catalan independence process.\u201d
\nSpain\u2019s top court last year shelved a separate investigation against Puigdemont for a terrorism charge related to 2019 protests in Catalonia against prison terms handed out to separatist leaders for their role in the secession bid.
\nPuigdemont has lived in exile in Belgium since the crisis and remains Spain\u2019s most-wanted fugitive as he was excluded from the remit of an amnesty law introduced by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez\u2019s leftist government to heal tensions.
\nBut his Junts per Catalunya party wields outsized influence in national politics as its seven MPs often determine whether Sanchez\u2019s minority government passes legislation in the hung parliament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MADRID: The Spanish Supreme Court on Thursday said it had closed a treason investigation against Catalonia\u2019s exiled separatist figurehead Carles Puigdemont over alleged Russian interference in the region\u2019s failed 2017 secession bid. The worst crisis Spain had experienced in decades saw the wealthy northeastern region hold a secession referendum and proclaim a short-lived declaration of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":78382,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78371"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78391,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78371\/revisions\/78391"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}