The PP has launched the judicial investigations opened against the former ETA leadership for the attack on Miguel Ángel Blanco, the people’s councilor from Ermua (Bizkaia), who was kidnapped and murdered in July 1997. The party has already questioned coroner Manuel García -Castellón to prosecute four former gang leaders for the crime: Miguel Gracia Arregui, aka Iñaki de Rentería; Mikel Albisu, Mikel Antza; Jose Javier Arizcuren, Kantauri; and Maria Soledad Iparraguirre, Anboto. The formation thus takes the initiative, so that the magistrate proposes to send them to court after the prosecutor of the National Court raised in July the possibility that the facts were prescribed.
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The synopsis of this attack, which sparked an unprecedented social mobilization in the fight against ETA, was reopened last March. Judge García-Castellón, who led the investigation into the murder 25 years ago, reopened the case after receiving a complaint from the victims’ association Dignidad y Justicia (DyJ) to find out if nine former leaders of the gang were implicated in the murder were decision to commit the assassination and also whether they could prevent it by having absolute control over the terrorist group. That is, if they have committed a crime by “omission”. A thesis later corroborated by the Civil Guard, which issued a detailed report stating that four former heads of the organization’s “executive committee” – Rentería, Antza, Kantauri and Anboto – were necessarily “thought out, planned, coordinated, having made the means possible and given the “final order” of the crime.
The application for processing the PP focuses on these four. In its more than 50-page letter, to which EL PAÍS had access, the party emphasizes that these ETA members “played a crucial role in the decision to attack Blanco, as they bore full responsibility for the young PP councillor, who barely He was 29 years old and brutally lost his life on that fateful day, July 13, 1997.” The formation insists there is “ample” documentation showing the four part at the time of the band’s leadership, such as confessions from other ETA members and the material taken from Antza when he was arrested in France – including 14 CDs of 165-band communications; and 78 internal bulletins—.
The recipe
The PP also addresses the issue of prescription, which has become one of the big debates in the case since it was reopened. At the time of the attack, the opportunity to pursue terrorist homicide expired at 20 years, but that ending was reformed in 2010 so it never expired. In this sense, the party defends that the four former chiefs can now be accused of these incidents and that, moreover, “in our jurisprudence and in comparative law, the possibility of retrospective application of the extension of the statute of limitations is accepted” if this comes into force before the previous one Deadline had “expired”: especially with these crimes, “which, in memory of the victims and the community, do not prescribe and threaten the most important pillars of the rule of law”.
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In addition, the popular ones state that “the specifics of the crimes of terrorism, which cannot be explained at this time, prevent a solution of this issue at the current stage of the investigations”. And that’s why, in his opinion, the indictment should be dictated and, in his case, discussed later: even at the trial or in the verdict. The PP also proposes another way to avoid this stumbling block: it proposes that “although the crime against humanity cannot be applied”, the principles of international criminal law that govern it are taken into account to stop the attack on Miguel Ángel Blanco to be considered unassailable.
On July 8, the judge declared that Iñaki de Rentería could no longer be prosecuted for the kidnapping and murder of the Ermua City Council because 20 years had passed since his arrest (on September 15, 2000), a milestone he reached in García have -Castellón account to start counting the time limit. However, he could target Kantauri, who was charged with the crime in 2016 and for which he faces prosecution as an instigator; and against Anboto and Antza, both arrested in 2004. However, the Prosecutor’s Office of the Regional Court believes that the statute of limitations should begin to run from the moment of the attack and has put forward the thesis that it would have already expired without the four being held against them as indirect authors (a kind of inductors with absolute control) to proceed as Dignidad y Justicia defends.
Right Miguel Albisu, aka “Antza”, upon his arrival at the National Supreme Court in July to testify in the murder of Miguel Ángel Blanco. Ricardo Rubio (Europa Press)
This position sparked debate within the public ministry itself. The prosecutor handling the case defended that it was possible to take action against the four ETA members, but his superiors before the National Court took the view that this was not the case. They then denied that they had received “guidance of any kind and less political” from the Attorney General, now headed by Álvaro García Ortiz, who decided to consult the matter with the Chamber’s prosecutor, scheduled for this October.
So far, the National Court has convicted three people of Blanco’s murder. To Francisco Javier García Gaztelu, Txapote, who pulled the trigger; his partner, Irantzu Galastegi, Amaia, who also helped carry out the attack; and Ibon Muñoa, former HB councilor in Eibar (Gipzukoa), who worked near the PP councilor and facilitated the terrorist squad’s operation. The judge subpoenaed Kantauri to question him about the crime on October 17 after Antza and Anboto declined to testify last July.
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