Puigdemont, who fled abroad after leading a failed 2017 independence bid for Catalonia, defied an arrest warrant to return to Spain to appear at a rally in Barcelona on August 8th near the Catalan regional parliament.
He delivered a brief speech to thousands of people before slipping away, prompting police to set up roadblocks across Spain’s second largest city in a failed bid to find him.
The 61-year-old announced the following day that he had returned to Belgium, where he has lived for most of the bulk of the last seven years.
Three officers from Catalonia’s regional police force were detained on suspicion of helping Puigdemont escape, including one who allegedly owned the car he had used to leave the scene.
They have been suspended while their alleged roles in Puigdemont’s escape are investigated, a spokeswoman for the force said Monday.
“This is a provisional measure,” she added.
Puigdemont led Catalonia’s regional government in 2017, when it pressed ahead with an independence referendum despite a court ban which was followed by a short-lived declaration of independence that sparked Spain’s worst political crisis in decades.
Spain’s parliament passed an amnesty law in May for those involved in the secession bid, but the Supreme Court ruled on July 1 that the measure would not fully apply to Puigdemont.
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