The National Court will not investigate the perpetrator of one of the most emblematic attacks of the Spanish transition: the January 1977 death of 19-year-old student Arturo Ruiz in Madrid by ultra-shooter José Ignacio Fernández Guaza. This Friday, the court rejected the last attempt by the victim's family to reopen the investigation, citing the statute of limitations on the crime after EL PAÍS located the murderer in Buenos Aires last November.
Fernández Guaza admitted in an interview that he killed the young man during a demonstration in favor of political prisoners in the heart of the Spanish capital, where fascists erupted and shouted: “Long live Christ the King!”
Section 1 of the Criminal Chamber of the National Court expressed its refusal to reopen the investigation in a non-appeal decision, the rapporteur of which is Judge Carolina Ruis Alarcó. An incident of annulment of a case filed by the family of Arturo Ruiz that was rejected by this judicial authority. The aim of the initiative was to reopen the investigation and arrest the criminal.
The closure in Spain contrasts with the upturn in investigations in Argentina. The judge of that country, María Romilda Servini, after the publication of the report, ordered the search and arrest of the fugitive, who lives in the civil parish of Ingeniero Maschwitz, with 15,000 inhabitants, in Buenos Aires. And he asked Spain for information about measures taken during the transition to combat ultra-groups that tried to undermine democracy.
In his last attempt to keep alive the case against Fernández Guaza, archived in 2000 by the National Court due to the statute of limitations of the crime, since the whereabouts of the fugitive was unknown (the Criminal Chamber now considers that the statute of limitations was agreed) . (previously are final) , the relatives of Arturo Ruiz brought to court his residence in Argentina discovered by this newspaper and the video of the news in which the ultra, who was never brought to justice and lived with impunity for 46 years thanks to a false identity , acknowledged the crime against journalists. “They refuse to prosecute a crime and condemn the right-wing extremist terrorist who confessed to the murder of Arturo Ruiz,” criticized the family members.
Likewise, an appeal was lodged against the application of the Law on Democratic Memory to reopen the trial, a regulation referred to in separate opinions by the judge of the Criminal Chamber of the National Court José Ricardo de Prada in 2023.
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The relatives also demanded that the crime of terrorism should not be prescribed, recalling that the co-author of the crime of Arturo Ruiz, Jorge Cesarsky, an Argentinean with ties to the shady Triple A, was sentenced to six years in prison for this crime, although he only served a year in prison. The prison.
In the document inadmissible by the National Court, the family, represented by Miguel Ángel Ruiz, the victim's brother, stated: “The murder [de Arturo Ruiz] “It was not an isolated event and must be explained with the events that constituted Black Week in Madrid and in the international context.”
Miguel Ángel Ruiz is referring to the leaden days that marked the tragic week of transition when, in January 1977, the assassination of Arturo Ruiz coincided with the massacre of the labor lawyers of Atocha – where four lawyers and a worker died. a Madrid law company linked to Comisiones Obreras – with the death of the student María Luz Nájera by the impact of a smoke bottle during a protest demonstration for the death of Ruiz.
After the setback of the National Court, the family will submit a request for protection to the Constitutional Court, as confirmed by Miguel Ángel Ruiz. “The criminals of all these events were supported by the state,” says the relative, who estimates that 318 people were killed by police and parapolice forces between 1976 and 1983 and insists on exploring the path of crimes against humanity in order to To escape condemnation The causes.
Fernández Guaza, now 76, fled Spain after the crime to avoid certain punishment and lived in secret as an invisible man under the protective cloak of a false identity. After being located by this newspaper, he assured that the Spanish security forces and corps gave him his fictitious name in the 1970s. And that the preferential treatment was because it was part of the dirty war against ETA. He said it was a commando of 15 civilians who killed terrorists in southern France in the mid-1970s.
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