The private and popular accusations of the case in which the alleged responsibility of several former ETA leaders in the assassination of Ermua councilor Miguel Ángel Blanco in 1997 is being investigated have argued that the facts analyzed do not prescribe after the amendment of the Penal Code of 2010, while the prosecution and the defense of the former ETA members have reiterated that the case should be closed without going into the merits, since the facts are already prescribed. This is how they expressed themselves this Monday before the court of the National Court that is studying the opportunity to cancel the proceedings against the former ETA leaders Mikel Albisu Iriarte, “Mikel Antza”; María Soledad Iparraguirre, “Anboto”, and Ignacio de Gracia Arregui, “Iñaki de Rentería”, for their alleged responsibility in this kidnapping and assassination.
At the hearing this Monday, all parties presented their thesis before the magistrates, and now the National Court must decide, following the appeal filed by the defense of the accused – which the prosecution joined – whether to choose to cancel the charges against the former leaders of ETA. Judge Manuel García Castellón prosecuted four former members of the Executive Committee of ETA – the three mentioned above and José Javier Arizcuren, alias “Kantauri” – considering that the requirements for the status of mediator author due to the scope of the organization were met. That is, the former leaders of the gang were involved in the murder when, as senior leaders, they could have prevented it.
The “Kantauri” case is excluded from this hearing, since the former leader of the terrorist group was already being prosecuted for these events, the kidnapping and murder of Miguel Ángel Blanco, by Judge Eloy Velasco in 2016, when they had not passed 20 years since the murder. The prosecutor in charge of the case, Carlos García Berro, stressed that the court must decide now on the statute of limitations and not postpone it until later, given that it already has all the factual elements and that a delay attributable to the State could lead to the conclusion that it has not respected the right of every person to be heard by an impartial tribunal within a reasonable time, as provided for in the European Convention on Human Rights.
Regarding the applicability of the 2010 reform of the Penal Code, which made murders resulting in death imprescriptible, Berro argued that it cannot be applied to the case given that the events occurred in 1997, so there can be no retroactivity of the legislative change. “Any procedural rule that implies the restriction of rights can never have retroactive effect,” he stressed, before concluding that although he knows that his position is “unpopular”, he considers it “more important to defend the guarantees of the rule of law (…) and not tolerate a reduction in the guarantees that protect everyone.”
A “clear and incontestable” fact
For its part, the defense of two of the accused stressed that their appeal against the accusation is based on the “clear and uncontroversial” fact that from July 1997 until the trial against their clients, on February 6, 2022, more than 20 years have passed and without interruption of the statute of limitations. Add to this that only the legislature can amend the criminal law to ensure that the 2015 amendment is applied to crimes committed before its entry into force. “He did not do it and to this day he has not done it,” he said.
The lawyer of Anboto, the third accused, made the same arguments as his partner and which he had already highlighted in his appeal and requested that the facts be prescribed. The accusations, for their part, repeated what was stated during the screening of “Antza” and “Rentería”. The accusation brought by the Popular Party, led by lawyer Jesús Santos, argued that the reform of Spanish law effectively protects people. the imprescriptibility of the facts examined and influenced the fact that the position of the prosecutor is contrary to the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court, the jurisprudential doctrine of the National Court and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
He stressed that if the limitation periods are extended at a time when the facts have not yet expired (2015), there is no violation of the rights of the accused. Finally, he indicated that the European Parliament recommended that Spain, regarding the unsolved ETA assassinations, continue investigating these cases and exhaust the possibilities of interpreting the legislation to this effect. For her part, the lawyer for Dignity and Justice indicated that the appeal filed by the accused was inadmissible since it was filed out of time. He argued that the indictment was notified on 26 April 2024 and that the defence only appealed after the instruction notice a month later.
However, he also argued that the appeal should be dismissed because the indictment is not the time to debate the statute of limitations, but rather later. And he added that the facts studied are imprescriptible according to the European Convention on Human Rights and the jurisprudence of the National Court.
A “hierarchical” group with “rigid discipline”
In the resolution with which he prosecuted them, the investigating judge analyzed the actions of ETA since its beginnings in the 70s and explained that it was a “strongly hierarchical” terrorist organization in which a “rigid discipline” prevailed, with a chain of vertical controls and a “military” type command in which the orders issued by its Executive Committee reached the members of the operational commands of the terrorist organization to be executed.
Each member of a command or structure, the judge noted, “obeyed the orders transmitted to him by his liaison officer or his direct superior because he knew that behind this order was the ‘Direction’ of ETA, its Executive Committee.”
He recalled that at that time, the four accused had “sufficient command and decision-making capacity over the terrorist activity of the organization to be able to make the decision not to kidnap the victim, as well as to avoid the ultimate outcome of the kidnapping.” And all this because they could have given the Donosti Command “the express and concrete order to release” Miguel Ángel Blanco.
