The Association of Victims of Terrorism (AVT) on Monday accused the government of Pedro Sanchez for having sneaked a reform agreed with Bildu to free 50 members of ETA. And the Executive launched the reform of Organic Law 7/2014 approved by the government of Mariano Rajoy, of the PP. This rule aimed to prevent ETA detainees from benefiting from a European agreement reducing the sentences of ETA members who have already served their sentences in France, i.e. around fifty, as reported by OKDIARIO.
The AVT warns that “44 members of ETA will be able to deduct what they carried out in France and 7 could leave prison in the coming months”. “The government categorically denied to us that this was going to happen. Lie number… we’ve already lost count, sorry”, quips the victims’ association.
Furthermore, they complain that “no one realized that the modification of Organic Law 7/2014, on the exchange of information on criminal records and the review of criminal resolutions in the European Union, also affected members of ETA”. “We want to think that it was an error and they will rectify it tomorrow in the Senate,” they answer each other.
Despite this, they admit from AVT that, even if they stop it, it will only be “a patch” because “sooner or later the roadmap will be fulfilled.” picture“. The main objective of the Aberzale training, according to the victims’ association, is to “empty the prisons”. “Mrs. Sanchez and [Fernando] Great Marlaska [ministro del Interior] They will be able to boast all their lives of being cult figures of the members of ETA”, affirms the entity.
A long-term reform
The first time the government raised the possibility of reforming this law was in the annual regulatory plan for 2022. 134 page document prepared by the Ministry of the Presidency which includes a compendium of all laws and royal decrees which are intended to be amended throughout the current year.
The new wording, however, was only addressed in March 2024, when the executive approved a draft organic law aimed at facilitating the exchange of criminal records between European Union member states. This decision was then justified by the need to “rationalize judicial cooperation in the fight against terrorism, organized crime and cross-border crime”. However, this proposal involved a modification of one of the articles of Organic Law 7/2014 which concerned convicted ETA members serving sentences outside Spain.
Until now, the established standard, through its unique additional provisionthat “under no circumstances will convictions handed down by a court of a Member State of the European Union before August 15, 2010 be taken into account for the application of this law”. That is to say, Rajoy’s government assured, by approving this article, that the sentence served by an ETA member convicted in another country of the European Union would not be counted in the time of execution of the sentence he would have to undergo in Spain.
The article disappeared from the opinion of the Justice Commission voted in the Lower House in September 2024. This text included an amendment by Sumar aimed at repealing the only additional provision. From the party led by the second vice-president and minister of labor and social economy, Yolanda Diazthey justified that it was a matter of adapting it to community regulations.
Finally, the text in the Justice Commission was adopted with 34 votes in favor and 3 abstentions. In this commission, Vox was the only party not to vote in favor of the text. However, he did not do so because of the modification of the only complementary provision, but because the reform came “from a government presided over by an autocrat who wants to control all the institutions of the State, who mocks the separation of powers and which is the end of democracy and the unity of Spain”, in the words of Emilio del Vallespokesperson at the Commission for the party led by Santiago Abascal.
The Socialist Executive thus responds to a historic request from the leader of Bildu, Arnaldo Otegiwho asked to “change the law” because it was the “only option” that existed to get ETA prisoners out of prison. “But to change this law, we must force a government like this to introduce a legislative change that favors ETA prisoners, with all that that means,” said the leader of the nationalist group. And he defined it as “the mother of all battles”. A battle that the ETA member convicted of belonging to the terrorist group is about to win.
The reaction of the PP
“If this outrage is confirmed, this indecency to which this Parliament has been subjected and the deception of all the parliamentary groups, of course from the PP we will study all the political, legal and parliamentary tools”, they assured from the PP. Noélia NunezDeputy Secretary for Mobilization and the Digital Challenge of the populardeclared on Monday that they would act “to prevent this from being consumed”.
The PP deputy described this legislative change as “extremely serious and worrying”. And he attacked the president of the government because, according to him, “he deceived the Congress and all the parliamentary groups for the benefit of his Bildu partners.”
