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On 31/10/01, Baltasar Garzón began the operation against the Gestoras Pro Amnistía, arresting 13 people, spokespersons and people known to be co-ordinators for the association. The judge believed it to be proven that “all of them develop work related to their membership of Gestoras with knowledge and being conscious of the integration of the said organisation within ETA-KAS-Ekin, and each and every one of them acting at the service of the terrorist organisation”. He also argued that ETA is a “group of structures which afford cohesion, meaning and aims to its broad, integrated and many-shaped criminal activity”, with the objective of “subverting the Constitutional order and seeking dismemberment or “self-determination” of a part of the Spanish territory and serious alteration of the public peace”. In order to justify this reasoning, there is a summary of activities such as “exercising control over the ETA prisoners’ collective, linking and communicating the leaders through some of the lawyers on its payroll; guaranteeing internal cohesion and submission to the discipline of the organisation; cooperating and funding maintenance costs for the prisoners and ETA members on the run in other countries; coordinating and promoting forms of struggle which complement ETA’s at the demonstration in support of the prisoners’ collective; taking advantage of the solidarity towards ETA prisoners who allegedly have their rights violated in order to carry out recruitment to regenerate its structure” The truth is that among the activities Central Investigation Court Nº5 charged Gestoras with there are some which are true, whilst other times –in the case of the activities which are clearly criminal- the charges are simply untrue.

Continuing with his line of argument, judge Garzón issued an injunction on 15/11/01, charging a further fifteen people in this case. On 03/12/01 the national coordinator of Gestoras Pro Amnistia, Juan María Olano, was arrested in Baiona. He was later extradited to the Spanish state.

On 19/12/01 Baltasar Garzón issued an order, restating his arguments from the previous operation and outlawing the whole of Gestoras Pro Amnistia, considering their activities forbidden by criminal law. He issued a further injunction on 05/02/02 whereby the activities of the more recent Askatasuna association were also banned, as it had continued Gestoras Pro Amnistia’s work and because the similarities between them amounted to a “succession of organisations”. On 05/02/03 yet another police operation took place against five people linked to this organisation. Their homes were searched, as were the offices of the Prisoners’ Relatives’ Association, Etxerat, in Bilbo, Hernani and Gasteiz. On 06/02/03 Central Investigation Court Nº5 issued a decision grouping all the preliminary investigations for this case under the heading of Case 33/01.

Case 33/01
Attack on Basque Lawyers

Case 33/01 –Gestoras Pro Amnistia- opened up a campaign by media and political figures against the activity of the lawyers working on cases which can be termed political. The main thrust of this campaign was to say that those lawyers were part of the “macos” –jails- front of the armed organisation ETA.

In the early hours of the 31st December, as pat of the operation against Gestoras Pro Amnistía, a number of offices and other premises which Judge Garzón supposed were used by Gestoras were searched. In fact, two of the offices searched were actually lawyers’ offices, which were inscribed as such at the corresponding law societies in Gipuzkoa and Navarre.

It is important to highlight the fact that Judge Baltasar Garzón, who led the operation in person, from Bilbo, was warned of this circumstance – the fact that the police were carrying out searches at lawyers’ professional offices- by lawyer Arantza Zulueta. Therefore, he was conscious of the fact from the early hours of the morning. In the case of the search in Hernani, the judge considered he was searching the offices of Gestoras Pro Amnistía, although it is actually two floors up from the lawyers’ offices he was illegally searching. Nevertheless, judge Garzón ignores lawyer Zulueta’s warnings and the operation went ahead. Both the offices were sealed off and the computers and documents in the offices were seized.

The judge went on to order the offices to be opened and the seized material to be returned, after he had all the documents and contents of the computers copied. This is a flagrant violation of the right of lawyers to professional confidentiality. Several lawyers were also indicted within these proceedings, under various cases and pieces.