Lawyers in London, Barcelona and Paris acting for three detained Catalan independence leaders have appealed to the United Nations, claiming the men are unlawfully imprisoned.Submissions have been presented to the UN working group on arbitrary detention, asking it to intervene in the cases of the ousted vice-president, Oriol Junqueras, and the Catalan civil society group chiefs Jordi Cuixart and Jordi Sànchez.Any determination made by the body, which meets in Geneva, will not be binding on Spanish courts, but will be a signal of international disapproval.

Two years ago, the working group declared that Julian Assange, who remains in Ecuador’s London embassy, was being “arbitrarily detained”.

Cuixart is president of Òmnium Cultural and Sànchez is a former president of the influential Catalan national assembly. They were arrested in October after the independence referendum, while Junqueras was detained early the following month. They have been in prison since then.(theguardian)…[+]