Manuel García-Castellón, judge of the National Court, has resumed the investigation into the alleged structures created between 2016 and 2019 to organize events to honor ETA members.
The investigating judge concluded his investigations last October, but has now accepted an appeal from the Dignity and Justice association - to which the PP joined - for new tests to be carried out that he considers pending.
“The closure of the investigation was premature, as there was a lack of necessary steps to clarify the facts being investigated,” García-Castellón admits in an order dated this Monday, where he points out the existence of three chats from the Telegram messaging application used to “promote campaigns and mobilizations in favor of the prisoners of the terrorist organization”: “Two of them, belonging to the Sortu party.”
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Six accused of paying homage to ETA members declare themselves spontaneous spokespersons for the acts
At the request of Dignity and Justice, presented in the summary as a popular accusation and linked to the PP, the magistrate considers it “necessary” and “pertinent” to clarify who are the “administrators” of those three Telegram channels: two of them, linked to Sortu ;
and the third, to the Sare citizen network, a support platform for the inmates of the defunct terrorist organization.
According to the document, two of the historical ETA members investigated in this process, Carlos Sáez de Eguilaz, alias
Kai
, and Felipe San Epifanio,
Pipe
, participated in those chats and received “abundant information”, “guidelines” and “instructions” about acts and mobilizations, as well as “messages about the release of ETA prisoners.”
Part of this content was “later disseminated” by organizations such as Etxerat, a support group for the gang's inmates, or by the magazine Kalerainfo, closed in 2021 by order of the National Court after requesting it from the Prosecutor's Office.
This judicial case was opened in 2018 for alleged crimes of terrorist glorification due to tributes to the gang's inmates who were released from prison, popularly known as
ongi etorri
.
In several phases, the Civil Guard has detained and investigated a dozen people: among them, the former ETA member Antonio López Ruiz, alias
Kubati;
Jorge Olaiz, former member of
ETA's
Amaiur command;
and Haymar Altuna, Oihana Garmendia and Miren Zabaleta, members of Sortu (one of the parties that are part of the EH Bildu coalition).
The defendants disassociated themselves from any alleged structure.
Kubati, murderer of the dissident of the Dolores González Katarain gang,
Yoyes
, even denied the existence of a stable structure to launch these acts and stated before the judge that they succeeded thanks exclusively to the "dynamics" of operation that operates within the
nationalist
left .
In 2021, the armed institute also arrested Sáez de Eguilaz and San Epifanio.
This summary has never been filed.
In fact, the Prosecutor's Office requested at the beginning of this January that, once the investigation was exhausted, six of the accused be prosecuted and proposed to be put on the bench: the ETA members Kubati, Sáez de Eguilaz and San Epifanio;
Haymar Altuna and Oihana Garmendia, from Sortu;
and Oihana San Vicente, from the Kalera Kalera organization.
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