“Absolute disqualification while serving the sentence.” This phrase is repeated in much of the sentences against the 44 former members of the dissolved ETA – seven of them convicted of murder or manslaughter – handed down in regional and local elections in the May 28 EH will compete Bildu candidatures. Its presence on the lists of the nationalist left, denounced on Tuesday by the Collective of Victims of Terrorism (Covite), caused uneasiness among the victims themselves and a great political uproar, which the PP took advantage of to press charges against Pedro Sánchez’s PSOE to raise The Abertzale formation has received support in Parliament. Another victims’ association, Dignity and Justice, has even filed a pending lawsuit with the prosecutor’s office to have these candidatures null and void if the General Electoral Code has been definitively violated.
However, a report prepared by the Association of Victims of Terrorism (AVT) concludes that all of them can be candidates as there is currently no legal obstacle to their convictions. The suspension sentences imposed on them by the courts at the time, whether absolute or special, have already been served. EL PAÍS has confirmed from the court documents that this is the case, for example, with five of the seven convicted of murder or manslaughter. This circumstance rules out the possibility of prosecuting his presence on the EH-Bildu lists or, as Vox has suggested, investigating the illegalization of the nationalist coalition.
The study prepared by the AVT shows that of the 44 candidates named, there are two for whom there is no conviction. In a case that of Adolfo Araiz Flamarique, spokesman for EH Bildu in the Parliament of Navarra in the now ending legislature, who is the number two party in this community in the next regional governments, because he was never decidedly condemned. In 1999 the Constitutional Court overturned the sentence imposed two years earlier by the Supreme Court on him as a member of the leadership of former Herri Batasuna. The other is that of Sonia Respaldiza, which occupies sixth place on the list of formation of the Llodio (Álava) Mayor’s Office. In her case, there are no judicial records of her having been tried or convicted in a terrorism case, although her name appeared in a document seized from a former terrorist organization chief.
For the 42 remaining candidates, the analysis carried out by the federation’s legal department shows that the 25 candidates for whom it had access to the penalty have already had their disqualification sentences served. In three other cases handed down by French courts, this sentence was not even handed down. Of the other 14 candidates, the AVT admits it does not have access to the sentencing document that sentenced them, but concludes that based on the sentence imposed and the date it was imposed, an absolute disqualification “fulfilled ‘ would be if it had been imposed. and believes it is “unlikely” that they will be given a special sentence if released from prison.
In the case of the seven convicted of murder or manslaughter, the verdicts available to this newspaper confirm this point. In 1985, Agustín Muiños Días, the sixth candidate on the EH-Bildu list for mayor of Legutio (Álava), was sentenced to 29 years in prison for the 1983 murder of businessman José Antonio Julián Bayano. In the ruling, the judges added that this sentence resulted in “total disqualification” during the time it was being served. Similarly expressed is the verdict sentenced to 55 years in prison for Juan Ramón Rojo González, number 21 on the list of the mayor of Irun (Gipuzkoa), for the 1991 murder of Francisco Gil Mendoza and the wounding of a brother.
Lander Maruri Basagoiti – second deputy on the list for the mayoralty of Zierbena (Bizkaia) – and Asier Uribarri Benito – number four on the list for the mayoralty of Maruri-Jatabe (Bizkaia) – were each sentenced to 16 years in prison in 2001 for their involvement as accomplices in the assassination of Civil Guardsman José Manuel García Fernández in 1997. The sentence convicting both also provided for the additional penalty of absolute expulsion “while the sentence lasts”. The same phrase includes the sentence condemning José Antonio Torre Altonaga, aka Medius, for his role in the 1978 attack that killed two workers at the Lemoniz nuclear power plant. Then sentenced to 20 years in prison, on May 28 he will be the second replacement for EH Bildu on the list of the mayor of Mungia (Bizkaia).
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In the case of the other two candidates convicted of murder, Begoña Uzkudun Etxenagusia and Juan Carlos Arriaga Martínez, the AVT study points in the same direction. Uzkudun, third on the list of mayors of Errezil (Gipuzkoa), was sentenced in 1989 to two terms of imprisonment totaling more than 100 years for two fatal assaults. In both sentences, the deprivation only took place during the maximum period of the sentence, which was set at 30 years at the time. The same goes for Arriaga, number three on the list of the mayor of Berrioplano (Navarra), who was sentenced to 29 years in prison in 1989 for the 1984 assassination of businessman and retired army commander Jesús Alcocer Jiménez.
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