Judicial Abuse

- Another judicial abuse against fundamental political liberties in Basque Country.

- French Government attempts to ban Batasuna in France.

- Free Torture in Spain and Basque Country!.

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NEWS :

- EAE - ANV and EHAK banned.

16th of September

Spanish Supreme Tribunal confirmed by unanimous decision, the illegalisation of EAE-ANV (Basque Nationalist Action) a historical Basque pro-independence party with a strong socialist tradition. A few days later, EHAK ("Communist Party of the Basque Homelands"), another pro-independence party was also banned.

ANV was the first Basque Nationalist political party to exist that presented itself on a socialist platform, it played a crucial role during the Spanish Civil War but maintained a low key profile during transition to democracy. Together with EHAK ("Communist Party of the Basque Homelands"), they became prominent again when they decided to take up the baton in the struggle for independence from other previously banned parties such as Batasuna. The Spanish Government, using a completely submissive judicial system, has thus eradicated the possibility to fight for an independent Basque Country by peaceful and democratic means.

This only comes days after the Constitutional Tribunal banned an open consultation on the future of Basque Country and the end of violence, which was organised by the autonomous Government. We invite you to condemn the lack of judicial independence and the active role that Spanish high courts are taking in the suppression of fundamental liberties in the Basque Country.

- French Judiciary jumps on the bandwagon of banning civil liberties.

Thirteen people were arrested last month in different locations in the French Basque Country in an operation presented as a result of the investigation into an act of sabotage against the tourist resort of Alain Ducasse. However, the number and mix of detainees, as well as the registration of two venues that belong to the pro-indpendence movment, raises doubts about the reasons for this police raids. The operation seemed to have a broader objective: to punish the independence movement.

What the police sources could not explain was the direct involvement of each one of those arrested with this action, or other acts of sabotage against tourism and real estate developments in recent times. With the passage of time, official sources acknowledged that three of the arrests, of Urtzi-García, Gorka Betolaza and Oskar-Bizkaia, occurred by chance. They happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But the question that all the arrests were justified under the umbrella of the investigation into the sabotage of Ducasse was still not clear, as noted by the local radio station France Bleue, which expressed its surprise about the mix and nature the detainees, some of them known for their public political activity.

The operation led by the magistrates Laurence Le Vert and Marie-Antoinette Houyvet appeared as a punitive operation against the pro-independence movement.



- Free Torture in Spain and Basque Country!


At least 33 civil guards and policemen convicted for torture had been pardoned by the various Spanish governments since the nineties. The vast majority of them, as many as 27, had abused Basque pro-independence activists. Moreover, almost all agents convicted in related cases in the Basque Country were eventually pardoned or failed to meet their sentences.

A study published in December 2004 by Amnesty International noted that between 1980 and that year there had been some 450 rulings relating to torture, which resulted in little more than 90 convictions. In total, in that period of time, about 220 agents had been convicted. According to analysis conducted by Basque newspaper GARA, from all those convictions, only 40 agents were involved in arrests of Basque pro-independence activists which constitutes a extremely low conviction rate compared to allegations from prisoners unrelated to the Basque Independence Movement. At least 27 of them ended up being pardoned. It is not known if they came to serve their sentence, since in more than one case, we have found that officials, that should have been disqualified, were still working at another job or had even been promoted.

The Civil Guard never dispensed, for example, with the services of Captain Jose Perez Navarrete, his colleague Jose Antonio Hernandez del Barco and agents Emilio Parar Moreno, Alejandro Blanco and Julio Iglesias Saavedra Mariño. All were convicted of torture to Juana Goikoetxea in 1987 to four months imprisonment and four years' disqualification. In February 1993, were pardoned by the government of Felipe González. Justice Minister Tomas de la Quadra-Salcedo, justified the pardon granted to the civil guards on the grounds that "the discourse of rehabilitation 1" must be global. The Minister added that after almost twelve years that these agents have continued serving in the same positions (after torturing Goikoetxea), it would not make much sense to apply the penalty of disqualification from their professional activities to which they were convicted.

There are also those who had been pardoned by up to two occasions. The civil guards Jose Dominguez Tuda, Manuel Macias Ramos and Antonio Roman Rios were convicted in 1990 of torturing brothers Victor Jesus, Joxe Mari and Lucio Olarra and Iñaki Olaetxea, and pardoned in early 1991. At the years following the 22nd of September of 1992, the same Jose Dominguez Tuda, was sentenced again, this time for torture to Jokin Olano in 1983. In March 1995, a new justice minister, Juan Alberto Belloch, pardoned him again for this crime, like the agent Manuel Caballero, also condemned for the mistreatment of Olano. The then minister of Justice and Interior said that the two Civil Guards pardoned “have demonstrated in the past eleven years of service in research work of terrorism that they are effectively reintegrated”.

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(This was a controversial policy applied to ETA members designed to divide prisoners and reject their political status)