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The PP asks to send four former ETA chiefs to the bench for the murder of Miguel Ángel Blanco

2022-10-12T09:41:30.838Z


The party moves file in the National High Court and already requests the prosecution of the four terrorists after the Prosecutor's Office raised a possible prescription


The PP has made a move in the judicial investigation opened against the former leadership of ETA for the attack on Miguel Ángel Blanco, the popular councilor from Ermua (Bizkaia) kidnapped and murdered in July 1997. The party has already asked the investigating judge Manuel García -Castellón to prosecute four former gang leaders for the crime: Miguel Gracia Arregui, alias

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 the bench, after the Prosecutor's Office of the National Court raised in July the possibility that the facts had prescribed.

More information

Confessions and compact discs: the clues that surround two former ETA chiefs for the murder of Miguel Ángel Blanco

The summary on this attack, which caused an unprecedented social mobilization in the fight against ETA, was reopened last March.

Judge García-Castellón, who had directed the investigation of the murder 25 years ago, took up the case again after receiving a complaint from the victims' association Dignidad y Justicia (DyJ) to find out if nine former leaders of the gang participated in the decision to perpetrate the murder. attack, and also if they were able to prevent it by having absolute control of the terrorist group.

That is, if they committed a crime by "omission".

A thesis that the Civil Guard later reinforced, by issuing an extensive report stating that four former heads of the organization's "executive committee" -Rentería, Antza, Kantauri and Anboto- necessarily "devised, planned, coordinated,

On these four focuses the request for processing of the PP.

In its letter of more than 50 pages, to which EL PAÍS had access, the party emphasizes that these members of ETA "had a determining role in the decision to attack Blanco, being fully responsible for the fact that the young PP councilor, who barely He was 29 years old, brutally lost his life on that fateful day, July 13, 1997.”

The formation insists that there is "abundant" documentation that shows that the four were then part of the leadership of the band, such as confessions from other ETA members and the material taken from Antza when he was arrested in France - which includes 14 compact discs with 165 band communications;

and 78 internal bulletins—.

The prescription

The PP also addresses the issue of prescription, which has become one of the great debates in the case since its reopening.

At the time of the attack, the possibility of prosecuting a terrorist murder expired at 20 years, but that end was reformed in 2010 so that it never expired.

In this sense, the party defends that the four former chiefs can now be accused of these events and that, in addition, "the possibility of retroactively applying the extensions of the limitation period is accepted in our jurisprudence and in comparative law" if this enters in force before the previous term “had expired”: above all, in these crimes, “which do not prescribe in the memory of the victims and the community, and which threaten the most essential pillars of the rule of law”.

Moreover, the popular ones state that "the specificities of the crimes of terrorism, currently imprescriptible, prevent this issue from being resolved" in the current phase of the investigations.

And, therefore, in his opinion, the indictment should be dictated and, in his case, this matter should be addressed later: even in the trial or in the sentence.

The PP also proposes another way to avoid this stumbling block: they propose that, "although the crime against humanity cannot be applied", the principles of international criminal law that govern it be considered in order to consider the attack against Miguel Ángel Blanco imprescriptible.

On July 8, the judge stated that Iñaki de Rentería could no longer be prosecuted for the kidnapping and murder of the councilor of Ermua, since 20 years had passed since his arrest (on September 15, 2000), a milestone that he has in García-Castellón account to start counting the deadline.

However, he could continue against Kantauri, who was charged with the crime in 2016 and for which he is being prosecuted as an inducer;

and against Anboto and Antza, both arrested in 2004. However, the National Court Prosecutor's Office considers that the statute of limitations should begin to run from the moment of the attack, and has put on the table the thesis that it would have already expired for the four, without being able to proceed against them as mediate authors (a kind of inducers who had absolute control),

On the right, Miguel Albisu, alias 'Antza', upon his arrival at the National High Court in July to testify for the murder of Miguel Ángel Blanco.Ricardo Rubio (Europa Press)

This position generated debate within the public ministry itself.

The prosecutor who was handling the case defended that it was possible to act against the four ETA members, but his superiors in the National Court considered that it was not.

They then denied that they had "received guidelines of any kind, and less of a political nature", from the State Attorney General's Office, now headed by Álvaro García Ortiz, who has decided to consult the issue with the Board of Prosecutors of the Chamber scheduled for this october.

So far, the National Court has convicted three people for Blanco's murder.

To Francisco Javier García Gaztelu,

Txapote

,

who pulled the trigger;

his partner, Irantzu Gallastegi,

Amaia

, who also participated in the execution of the attack;

Already

Ibon Muñoa, former HB councilor in Eibar (Gipzukoa), who worked close to where the PP councilor did and who facilitated the operation of the terrorist command.

The judge has summoned Kantauri to question him about the crime on October 17, after Antza and Anboto refused to testify last July.

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Source: elparis

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