Sentenced in 2002 to a century in prison for the murder of the socialist leader Fernando Buesa and his escort, the Ertzaina Jorge Díez Elorza, by means of a car bomb; sentenced in 2007 to an additional 22 years for attempted assassination against the president of the Alava Provincial Council, Ramón Rabanera. Towards ETA Luis Mariñelarena Garcia has just been granted the third penitentiary degree serving only 22 years in prison, “while, according to the legislation in force at the time of his conviction, he had to serve at least 30 years compulsorily”. He adds it to EL ESPAÑOL Mikel Buesabrother of the historic and lamented Fernando Buesa. “They saved him 8 years.”
This is not the only third diploma granted in recent hours. also benefited Harriet Iragi Gurrutxagamember of the Andalusia Command and sentenced to 128 years in prison for the assassination of the Malaga city councilor José María Martin Carpenathe prosecutor of the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia, Luis Porter and of Antonio Muñoz Cariñanosmedical colonel. His first conviction dates back to 2001. He served 23 years in prison.
The decision for the two members of ETA to access the third degree, that is to say semi-freedom, occurred for the first time under a socialist mandate of the Basque Government. He was Mary Jesus Saint JosephBasque Minister of Justice and Human Rights (PSOE), who, according to Mikel Buesa, granted “favorable treatment”, undoubtedly “clearly inclined to agreements with Bildu to carry out his initiatives in Congress” . It’s true, he emphasizes., “privileged treatment” towards the members of ETA.
This measure surprised victims of terrorism, but not Mikel Buesa. “That didn’t surprise me at all.” He states that they are “concessions of the PSOE to the heirs of ETA“which,” he reiterates, “doesn’t surprise me at all.”
Until now, the Basque Government sent victims’ associations “a sheet of detailed information” with which it was possible to check “what they based their resolutions on”, that is to say, to check whether there was had or not repented on the part of the Members of ETA, they explain in a press release from the Collective of Victims of Terrorism in the Basque Country (Covite). This time he didn’t.
La asociación que preside Consuelo Ordóñez abundó ayer a EL ESPAÑOL que ni Luis Mariñelarena ni Harriet Iragi “cumplen con el requisito fundamental exigido por la ley para progresar en grado, que es el del arrepentimiento por sus crímenes” y la “colaboración con la Justicia”.
“Me consta”, prosigue Mikel Buesa, “que Daniel Portero, hijo de Luis Portero, [asesinado en Granada por Harriet Iragi, el segundo etarra que se va a beneficiar del tercer grado] He is also outraged. In the world of victims of terrorism it’s scandalous. Not a hundred percent, but most.”
-Covite announced that it would ask the national prosecutor’s office to revoke the concession. Do you trust me to do this?
-Taking into account that the prosecutor of the National Court is under the command of the State Attorney General and that he is more like a politician than an agent of justice, no.
Since July 2021, powers in prison matters have depended on the Basque Government. In the previous legislature, from the PNV. In this case, and after the PNV-PSE pact after the Basque elections, the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights is in the hands of the socialists, and more particularly of María Jesús San José.
-A week ago, the Minister of Justice declared in Parliament: “No one expects from me special treatment for ETA prisoners.”
-The fact that Mariñelarena obtains the third degree responds to a prison policy decision. The advisor is the executor and she can say whatever she wants, but it’s preferential treatment. It is what it is.
Buesa, who was president of the Ermua Forum and patron of the Freedom Foundation, was also part of Covite, although he left the association some time ago. He affirms that the collusion of the PSOE with Bildu “is not only the granting of the third degree”. They are also found “in the progressive ETA transfers in the Basque Country, in the stages from the first to the second year…”.
One of these transfers was precisely that of Harriet Iraginow benefiting from the decision. It was in March 2021, five months before the Government handed over prison powers to the Basque Country. The Ministry of the Interior approved its transfer of the penitentiary center of Castellón IIin the town of Albocàsser, at the Logroño prison. He did this despite the fact that the treatment commission, the body made up of prison professionals, had proposed keeping him in Castellón II by five votes to two.
