The Supreme Court has confirmed the only sentence (24 and a half years in prison) that weighed on the ETA member Iratxe Sorzabal Díaz, one of the three people who, on October 20, 2011, read the statement of the definitive cessation of the violence of the terrorist gang.
The sentence of the high court confirms the penalty for a crime of havoc decreed by the National Court for the placement of two explosive devices in Gijón in November 1996, in the Palace of Justice and in the pharmacy of the husband of a former Secretary of State for Affairs Penitentiaries.
The court has fully dismissed Sorzabal's appeal, which alleged that after being arrested, she was forced by the Civil Guard through torture to testify against her will twice.
Sorzabal was arrested in France in 2015 and has been in preventive detention in Spain for this case since last September, after the French authorities handed her over after she had served several sentences imposed by the French courts.
When she was arrested in France, the Spanish Prosecutor's Office announced that she would request the reopening of 21 cases for her alleged involvement in various attacks by
the Ibarla commando
, in which she was allegedly involved.
Among them, the murder of the policeman Eduardo López Moreno, in 1994, and of the
ertzaina
Ramón Doral, in 1996. He was also implicated in the placement of five artifacts in December 1995 at El Corte Inglés in Valencia, which caused the death of a woman, Josefina Corresa.
However, except for the Gijón artifacts for which she has been convicted, the rest of the cases against her were archived or provisionally dismissed.
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The Gijón artifacts were placed at dawn on November 2, 1996 and, as proven by the National Court, it was Sorzabal herself who called Civil Protection twice to warn that they were going to explode.
The one placed in front of a pharmacy caused no damage, while the one at the Palace of Justice caused damage to several vehicles and adjoining buildings.
The ETA member had focused her defense on the fact that her statement before the Civil Guard was made under torture and ill-treatment, a situation that she denounced in court after being transferred from the police station and that she recounted later in a letter sent from prison to the band terrorist.
The court that has now examined his appeal, made up of judges Manuel Marchena (president and rapporteur), Miguel Colmenero, Andrés Palomo, Susana Polo and Javier Hernández, emphasizes in its judgment that "torture contains an insurmountable contradiction with the foundations of any democratic society”, so the need for an exhaustive investigation to clarify the reality of any complaint of police mistreatment is a requirement that defines the quality standard of a Rule of Law.
But in the case examined, the Supreme Court endorses the conclusion that there was no torture that was reached by the National Court, since it was done after an exhaustive analysis and after assessing the following data: that the detainee was recognized by the forensic doctor in different occasions during his stay at police stations;
that she was also recognized by the Hospital Clínico Universitario, a public entity with no organic-functional link to those responsible for the Ministry of the Interior;
that she was examined and diagnosed at this center by three different medical services (internal medicine, traumatology, and dermatology), looking for signs that would support her version of the existence of torture;
that photographs were taken of skin lesions on her right and left side;
that she underwent a biopsy;
Likewise, it recalls that the forensic doctor attached to the National Court was subjected in his expert opinion to cross-examination between the accusations and the defense, offering explanations about the symptoms presented by the accused and the impossibility of connecting its etiology with acts of torture.
That is to say, the room points out, that the complaint by Sorzabal's defense did not have an "institutional indifference" as a response when it came to clarifying the facts denounced.
To all these elements valued by the National Court, the sentence indicates, we should add the "true and incontestable" fact that the torture denounced by Iratxe Sorzabal was investigated by an Investigating Court that agreed to dismiss it, and that against this decision He promoted an appeal that was also rejected by the Provincial Court of Madrid.
The defendant supported her defense in a report from the Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) of the Council of Europe, and another from Amnesty International, which considered that torture was proven.
The court highlights the "relevant role" of both institutions in the fight to defend human dignity, but adds that "the uncritical acceptance" of the reports emphasized by the defense to justify the existence of torture is "incompatible with the very meaning of the judicial function”.
“Telling officials of a Council of Europe committee or representatives of a non-governmental organization that they have been the victim of torture, brutality or inhuman treatment is of vital importance, not only to prevent their impunity, but to intensify democratic controls in any society to be indifferent to these complaints or not rigorously prosecute attacks on the dignity of the complainant.
However, once a jurisdictional process is activated in which the complaint of torture can be a determining factor in its outcome, the report, which has already played its most valuable role, must give up its space to the evidentiary activity carried out by the parties," he points out. sentence.
Conviction not based on police statement
The defense also alleged a possible violation of the right to a fair trial by depriving Sorzabal of the right to designate a lawyer of his trust during the period of incommunicado detention, but the court warns that the National Court has not based the sentence on the incriminating statement of the defendant before the Civil Guard, but in a letter signed by herself and addressed to the leadership of ETA, together with other evidence offered by the witnesses and doctors who testified in the trial.
“If the document in question contained a quasi-literal repetition of the content of the confession made at police headquarters, the contaminating effect of the evidence would be inevitable.
However, reading the document makes it possible to verify that it contains numerous unknown information that is not reflected in the police statements or extensions of the information already known that, due to its length and detail, only the person who had intervened in the criminal actions described can know”, says the sentence.