The Senate, on the verge of approving a European transposition which will reduce the sentence of prisoners like Txapote and 43 other members of ETA

THE Association of Victims of Terrorism (AVT) warned this Monday that the reform of the Organic Law of 2014 on the exchange of information on criminal records and the examination of criminal judicial resolutions in the EU that the Senate will vote on this Tuesday will allow 44 ETA prisoners will be released from prison early, seven of whom will be free in a few months.

This is a transposition of European regulations, which will benefit, among others, prisoners such as Txapote. The murderer of Miguel Ángel Blanco will have his sentence reduced by six years, allowing him to be released from prison in a few months. His sentence ended in 2031.

In a press release, the AVT denounces that this is the consequence of the deletion in Congress of an article and the additional provision of the current norm which until now prevented convicted members of ETA from being able to deduct the sentences they served in France.

The plenary session of the Congress ratified on September 18 unanimously the modification of this standard which entails the modification of the law on the exchange of information of criminal record and the examination of criminal resolutions in the EU and seeks to adapt Spanish regulations to European regulations, to the European Criminal Records Information System (Ecris).

Thus, if the text is approved as it came from Congress, the exception which prevented people convicted of terrorism from seeing the years in prison they spent in France reduced from their sentence in Spain will disappear from the Spanish judicial system. . .

“We cannot believe what is happening,” the victims’ association is surprised by the approval with the support of the PP, Voice And UPN to the removal of this provision which affects ETA detainees, as warned in 2022 by the AVT, which hopes that the Senate will be able to rectify this “error”.

However, the victims’ group seems resigned: “Sooner or later, Bilduetar’s plan to empty the prisons will be realized, and Messrs. Sánchez and Marlaska will be able to boast all their lives of being cult figures of ETA members .”