Extradition fight
lingers for Catalan
The Associated Press
BARCELONA, Spain -- Catalonia's former regional President Carles Puigdemont has vowed to keep fighting extradition back to Spain if the European Union's parliament strips him of his immunity as a lawmaker this week.
Puigdemont and two fellow Catalan separatists won seats in the European Parliament in 2019, two years after fleeing Spain because they had led a failed secession attempt for Catalonia that Spain considered illegal.
Today, Puigdemont, along with cohorts Toni Comin and Clara Ponsati, face a vote by the European Parliament on whether to lift their immunity as lawmakers, a move that has been recommended by the parliament's Legal Affairs Committee.
"We contemplate all scenarios, obviously even that we will lose our immunity, which is the most likely," Puigdemont said Saturday evening from his residence in Waterloo, Belgium. "But we know that would not be the end of the road."
Lifting their immunity would allow Spain to once again pursue their extradition to stand trial, like fellow separatist leaders who remained in Spain and were found guilty of sedition and the misuse of public funds in the 2017 breakaway bid.
So far, courts in Belgium, Germany and Britain have refused to send Puigdemont and his colleagues back on grounds of sedition, as has been requested by Spain. Outstanding arrest warrants in Spain mean they would be immediately detained if they attempted to return home.
Puigdemont said that besides resisting in the national courts, the three will "take our case to the Court of Justice of the European Union."
Puigdemont appealed to fellow lawmakers on the grounds that his cause is shared by other minorities in larger European nations.
"The question is whether political persecution is accepted. If political minorities, nationalists and dissidents have the same right as others to be represented, to do politics, they will be voting on that," Puigdemont said.
The EU parliament's Legal Affairs Committee did not see any threat of political persecution when it analyzed the case last month.
Strike said to start
oil-site fire in Syria
The Associated Press
BEIRUT -- A suspected missile strike on an oil-loading facility used by Turkey-backed opposition forces in northern Syria sparked a fire across a large area where oil tankers are normally parked, aerial and satellite images show.
Syrian opposition groups and at least one war monitor blamed Russia for the strike Friday night near the towns of Jarablus and al-Bab, near the border with Turkey. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, based in Britain, said Russian warships in the Mediterranean had fired three missiles that struck primitive oil refineries and tanker trucks in the region.
It said more than 180 trucks and tankers were burned, and at least four people were killed and 24 wounded.
Photos and videos from the air taken by the Syrian opposition's civil defense group, known as the White Helmets, showed scores of workers struggling to extinguish a fire involving oil tanker trucks in an open field, as black and gray smoke covered the area.
Satellite images by Planet Labs Inc. analyzed by The Associated Press on Sunday also showed the aftermath of the large fire that tore through an area near Jarablus between Friday and Saturday morning.
Past satellite photos of the site, some 45 miles northeast of the Syrian city of Aleppo, showed hundreds of tanker trucks gathered in the area.
An image from Saturday showed char marks across the entire area where the trucks once were. NASA's fire satellite monitoring, which watches for flashes associated with blazes or explosions, showed fires at the site in the early morning hours of Saturday.
The reports of missiles fired from a Russian warship -- a rare occurrence -- could not be independently verified. Russia, which is a main supporter of Syrian President Bashar Assad in the country's 10-year civil war, has not commented on the accusations.
Turkey's state-owned Anadolu news agency reported they were ballistic missiles, but it said it was not clear who carried out the attacks.
Turkey and allied Syrian opposition fighters control large parts of northern Syria.
