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| Europe |
| Senior separatists detained as Madrid piles pressure on Catalonia |
| 2017-10-18 |
| [DAWN] A Spanish court has ordered two powerful Catalan separatists to be detained, threatening a further escalation of the political crisis on Tuesday as both sides refuse to budge in their high-stakes standoff over the region's independence bid. Protests broke out in Catalonia's capital Barcelona on Monday as news spread that Jordi Cuixart and Jordi Sanchez were being kept behind bars on sedition charges. The pair are the leaders of pro-independence citizens' groups Omnium Cultural and the Catalan National Assembly (ANC) respectively, both of which count tens of thousands of members and have emerged as key players in the Catalonia crisis. They are accused of stirring up major protests in the run-up to the banned October 1 independence referendum in the region of 7.5 million people which has its own language and culture. |
| Posted by:Fred |