The National Court (AN) gave its agreement file a complaint for kidnapping and murder from Ermua’s advisor Miguel Angel Blanco in 1997 for the former leaders of the terrorist group ETA Miguel Albisu Iriarte, “Mikel Antza”and Ignacio de Gracia Arregui, ‘Iñaki de Rentería’, considering that the facts are prescribed.
In an order this Thursday, the Criminal Chamber takes this decision just one day after having given its agreement to the case for which it was also head of ETIn Soledad Iparrraguirre, aka “Anboto”in accordance with what was requested by the prosecution and by the defense of the former leaders of the gang.
It should be remembered that the popular accusers – Popular Party, Dignity and Justice, Association of Victims of Terrorism and Villacisneros Foundation – argued that the events were not foreseen at the time of the approval of Organic Law 5/2010 of June 22 in which they were approved. declare the imprescriptibility of terrorist crimes resulting in death and, therefore, this rule would be applicable to this procedure.
Now, in this new order, the judges of the Fourth Section are using the same arguments they used with “Anboto”. And, they specify, this resolution “cannot be different from that one, taking into account the concordance of the factual and legal identity of the facts, the legal arguments fought in the two appeals, and the same request which affects also the three accused”.
“This is why we must refer to what is said there in order to avoid unnecessary reiterations and above all for the sake of legal certainty, without this rapporteur having to add anything to the reasoning set out exhaustively in the resolution mentioned above,” the order specifies. .
In the aforementioned resolution, the Chamber indicates – contrary to what the accusations maintain – that in the legal system and jurisprudence there are “no current resolutions which proclaim the validity of the thesis of retroactivity of the criminal regulations that it proclaims.” “That is to say who considers that an extension of the limitation period can be applied immediately to the criminal prosecution of acts which were not prescribed at the time of its entry into force,” it indicates.
The magistrates recalled that, as indicated by the prosecution during the hearing during which the defendants’ appeals were studied, to resolve this question, they must adhere to “the provisions of criminal law and the jurisprudence which l the interpreter, “to avoid the worst consequences”. consequences caused by the so-called “Parot doctrine”, which was later repealed by the European Court of Human Rights”.
The Chamber also referred in its order to the charges’ allegation that there were already three resolutions of the Fourth Section itself that supported its position of non-prescription of facts in this case.
“We do not opt for a unambiguous and definitive procedural position on the prescription which is recommended here, but on the contrary, since in the first two ordinances it was decided to delay or postpone the decision to be adopted on the prescription of crimes for other procedural phases and judicial bodies, due to opposing positions, while the third order was not even discussed, given the time elapsed since the entry into force of the prescription,” detailed the Chamber.
The judges of the Court listed, to support their thesis on retroactivity, various judgments of the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court.
A hierarchical band with “rigid discipline”
It should be remembered that Judge Manuel García Castellón prosecuted four former members of the ETA executive committee –the three mentioned above and José Javier Arizcuren, alias “Kantauri”– if we consider that the conditions of mediated authorship were met by area of the organization. That is to say, the former leaders of the gang were involved in the murder when, as senior leaders, they could have prevented it.
He The “Kantauri” affair left aside in which the appeals were studied, 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 20 years had passed not passed since the murder.
In the resolution with which he sued the former leaders, García Castellón analyzed the actions of ETA since its beginnings in the 1970s and explained that It was a “highly hierarchical” terrorist organization in which a “rigid discipline” reigned, with a vertical and “military” chain of 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, noted the judge, “obeyed the orders transmitted to him by his liaison officer or his direct superior because he knew that behind this order was the ‘Directorate’ of ETA, its Executive Committee”.
It was the heart of the direction of ETA the one who adopted, according to the magistrate, the strategic decisions of particular and greatest importance that the members of the commands executed without raising any objection. He added that, in the event that any of the members of these commands did not agree with the orders or instructions received, he was replaced by another activist willing to comply with the instructions of the ruling structure.
