The Commission for victims of political violence in Navarra confirms that there were “abuses on a significant scale”

The use of torture by public officials and far-right groups in Navarra between 1950 and the present “was not systematic,” although it is noted that “abuses occurred on a significant scale.”

It is one of the first conclusions drawn from the first parliamentary appearance of the president of the Commission for the Recognition and Reparation of Victims of Political Violence and General Director of Peace and Coexistence of the Provincial Government, Martín Zabalza, held this Wednesday.

In the first year of the commission's activity, they have received 41 requests to recognize victims of mistreatment or torture committed by public officials or by extreme right-wing groups.

That number, 41, is not lower, says Zabalza, and the forecast is that this number will increase in the coming years because previous studies have identified more than a thousand possible cases.

Specifically, a study by the Basque Institute of Criminology (IVAC), commissioned by the Government of Navarra, identified 1,068 possible cases of torture and ill-treatment suffered by 891 people in the community between 1960 and 2015.

The president of the commission explains that we cannot speak of a systematic use of torture due to the long period of time contemplated by Foral Law 16/2019 on recognition and reparation of victims.

“We are talking about human rights violations during the entire period of the Franco dictatorship, during the transition and democracy - also in the context of the fight against terrorism.

The intensity is not the same in all periods.”

For this reason, “there is talk of abuse on a significant scale in all these phases,” but not of systematic practice, he points out.

For now, of the 41 requests received, four have been inadmissible because the facts do not comply with the content of the law.

The rest of the files are being processed, so their content and the name of the complainants is confidential.

However, it has been revealed that ten of these requests correspond to deceased people, whose families have requested that they be recognized as victims.

Another 13 complainants demand to be recognized as such for having suffered torture or ill-treatment, and another 18 ask to be declared victims for having suffered physical or psychological harm.

The cases are very varied, including eye injuries from rubber balls or blows from a baton or gunshot wounds in demonstrations or street riots.

For its work, the commission is based on the concept of torture determined by the United Nations Convention on this matter, which considers that it is “any act by which serious pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person. for the purpose of obtaining from her, or from a third party, information or a confession, when inflicted by a public official or other person in the exercise of public functions, at his or her instigation or with his or her consent.”

It is not easy to prove that this mistreatment has happened because there is hardly any documentation in many of these cases.

When the commission admits the file, two forensic experts and a psychologist - designated by the Navarro Institute of Legal Medicine - interview the complainant and try to gather all possible information.

“It is a complex and very guaranteeing system,” adds Zabalza.

“The law does not require us to do so, but, from the moment a person enters our facilities, we understand the process as accompaniment to that person, an accompaniment that we intend to be healing and that takes us some time.

The law gives us one year to resolve each of the files and we exhaust those deadlines.”

Given the lack of documentation, they are turning to the press, other people's testimonies or medical records.

“It's about adding elements to the file,” he explains.

In addition, professionals who interview complainants apply techniques such as the Istanbul Protocol, “a series of techniques, of tools, that are used internationally to know if the story is coherent, if it is telling the truth or not.”

Furthermore, they place the person in contexts that lead them to remember certain elements that, in many cases, cause pain.

“The level of sincerity is remarkable.

They are techniques that are internationally approved and give us very high levels of guarantees,” says Zabalza.

In fact, this technique has already been used by the IVAC, which has randomly selected 50 of the people who have reported having suffered torture and has concluded that “they have given a consistent and credible account of their experience, with consistent patterns.” .

There is an exception to this process: those who were injured while handling weapons or explosives intended to commit violent acts cannot apply for this recognition.

Pain recognition

Being considered a victim of a politically motivated act does give the right to monetary recognition, but “the vast majority of victims say that the least important thing is the financial compensation established by the experts.

What they appreciate most is that the Administration recognizes that public officials or extreme right groups caused them a lot of pain in their day and that there has been historical denialism.

“They are victims who have been hidden for years.”

In any case, recognition as a victim does not give the right to criminal justice.

That is, victims are recognized, but not perpetrators.

Zabalza details that they work with “the limits that the Constitutional Court imposed on the law.

In no case do we recognize the perpetrators, we do not identify them, we do not ask them about them at any time.”

The Constitutional Court endorsed the rule in 2021, after it was appealed by PP and Vox.

On the other hand, if the experts consider it, the victims may receive financial compensation that is calculated according to tables established by law.

This compensation is equal to that received, for example, by victims of ETA terrorism.

The existence of approved tables for victims of different violence is a key line in the work of the commission and the norm that protects it, Zabalza emphasizes, because it is based on the premise that “all victims deserve to be recognized without comparisons or dilutions. ”.

For this statement, it is based on the Navarrese Coexistence Plan that unanimously rejects and considers illegitimate the violence "deployed for 85 years in Navarra by the coup plotters of '36, the Franco dictatorship, the terrorism of ETA, the terrorism of the groups of extreme right, illegitimate violence committed by the State, the so-called

kale borroka

, jihadist terrorism.”

It has not been easy to adopt this perspective. “This is a consensus that ETA's terrorism did not allow us to reach because it has done us a lot of damage.

The absence of terrorism allows us to create spaces where all human rights violations are condemnable.

“We all have human rights and no one can violate them,” Zabalza concludes.

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