| Main piece
of the Case 18/98:
Trial in Court, chronology
Word
document with the summaries of the oral hearings
referring to the Main Piece of the Trial
Comittal
of the Case 18/98 (in spanish)
Prosecution
request (in spanish)
The sessions of the trial are every week, on Monday
morning and afternoon, Tuesday morning and afternoon
and Wednesday morning.
14/03/07
Sessions 198 and 199
The oral proceedings
finish with a rousing “Gora Euskal Herria
askatuta!"
Iñigo
Iruin provided the closing statements for the
defence in this trial, and the attorney set aside
his final words to explain that he was to have
defended in that courtroom Jokin Gorostidi, who
had passed away in spring last year of heart failure,
one day before he was to testify in court. Iruin
stated that the prosecution accused the historical
nationalist militant of a “crime of integration”
for his work on behalf of deported Basque politicians
and for his travels to the ends of the earth to
try to improve the living conditions of these
people. Iruin poignantly quoted the words of Gorostidi:
he “had been given two death sentences in
the Proceso de Burgos” [a famous trial towards
the end of the Franco dictatorship in 1969] and
35 years later he had once again been “abducted”
by “the Spanish State’s war strategy
in indictment 18/98”. The veteran Basque
nationalist demanded the Basque Country’s
right to voice and vote and warned that until
this happened, “we will not be silenced”.
Iruin, after reading the final words of this person
who was also his friend, stated that if Gorostidi
had been in the room, he would have also expressed
his “pride” in sharing the dock with
the rest of the prisoners. “This pride is
also shared by these nine legal representatives,
who have taken on the defence of all of these
people and which we would do again as a sign of
our fondness and solidarity with them,”
Iruin went on to say. You may absolve them or
condemn them, but what you cannot escape is the
fact that a large part of Basque society have
seen in these people an example to be followed
in defence of rights.”
The presiding judge Angela Murillo ordered a recess
upon witnessing the defendants’ applause
of the attorney’s words. Upon returning,
the defendants themselves were allowed to exercise
their right to their final words. All of them
echoed the sentiments expressed in Jokin Gorostidi’s
final words.
The presiding judge then suspended proceedings
for later sentencing, upon which the defendants
shouted the final “Gora Euskal Herria askatuta!”
which marked the end of this trial.
> up
13/03/07
Sessions 196 and 197
Goirizelaia
called for “fair justice which can only
lead to acquittal”
The attorney
made note of the particular point of view that
the supporters of this trial “have regarding
the Basque conflict and their way of dealing with
it” in reference to the disparity in interpretations
of different facts throughout the trial. In effect,
she reasoned that instead of judging criminal
acts, the prosecutor was really asking the judges
to “mete out punishment for work in favour
of dialogue and understanding” carried out
by the accused.
With regard to the Xaki European Association,
Goirizelaia informed the court that the Spanish
Supreme Court, the High Court of Justice of the
Basque Country and the fourth circuit of the National
Court itself had ruled out any criminal act on
their part.
Goirizelaia explained that this European Association
was registered as such in Lakua and its purpose
was to publicise the Basque Country’s situation
around the world and promote fraternal relations
with other peoples. “What is on trial, no
matter how the Ministry wants to dress it up,”
is their work in the area of international relations.
“The Spanish state have always been afraid
that outside of their borders the international
community finds out what is happening in the Basque
Country and obtains information on a model solution
based on the respect for rights described by the
people on trial,” indicated the attorney,
who believed that the purpose of the operation
was to put an end to their work in the area of
providing information.
Kepa Landa’s intervention wound up by thanking
the defendants for their confidence in him and
reminding the court that “this has been
more than a trial, it has been much more than
legal proceedings against a number of people,
therefore one identifies with them much more.”
“In this court, the rights and freedoms
of a nation have been under assault. This is my
nation and these are my people.”
> up
12/03/07
Sessions 194 and 195
Elosua:
the prosecution has developed a strategy to “hide,
distort and contradict” the truth about
Zumalabe
In their
interventions regarding the Joxemi Zumalabe foundation,
the attorneys made note of the lack of incriminating
evidence throughout the oral proceedings, denouncing
“a hodgepodge of contradictions, half-truths
and discriminatory treatment” toward the
defendants by the prosecutor. Counsel Elosua also
criticised the prosecution’s strategy of
“confusing and distorting” the facts
presented in the trial in support of the charges
against them.
In this vein they reminded the court that the
Spanish police’s own Central Intelligence
Unit confirmed the defence’s argument regarding
the activities carried out by the foundation.
Even the Spanish police officer who acted as spokesperson
admitted that the content of the report must have
been modified. “For that reason there was
not even the slightest mention of any proof, not
even that which they had proposed,” indicated
the attorney, regarding the final report exhibited
by the prosecution.
The lawyer also denounced the fact that all of
the foundation’s communications had been
intercepted by the Spanish police over the course
of two years, in addition to the police’s
confiscating of all of their documentation —
minutes of meetings, internal debates, etc. Nevertheless,
“the state prosecution had everything they
needed to present the court with the reality of
the Joxemi Zumalabe Foundation, but they did not
because they chose not to.” “They
closed their eyes to any reality that did not
match their version,” he charged.
> up
09/03/07
Sessions 192 and 193
>
up
08/03/07
Sessions 190 and 191
>
up
07/03/07
Sessions 188 and 189
>
up
06/03/07
Sessions 186 and 187
>
up
05/03/07
Sessions 184 and 185
> up
27/02/07
Sessions 182 and 183
Report on conclusions by the AVT (Asociación
Víctimas del Terrorismo [Association for
Victims of Terrorism]): longer sentences
Attorneys
Emilio Murcia and Carlos Rodríguez Segura,
speaking for the civil case brought by the Association
for Victims of Terrorism, read from their reported
conclusions. In it, they echoed the main arguments
brought by the prosecutor, but maintained their
two initial demands, one being a conviction for
the crime of ‘membership in a terrorist
organisation’ for those where the prosecution
had reduced their request to ‘collaboration’,
the other being conviction for money-related crimes
that Inland Revenue agents themselves had found
to be groundless.
With regard to the contents, they referred to
what they labelled as ETA’s “financial
apparatus, the intermediary apparatus and the
external-relations apparatus.” They considered
that “it has been proven that there exists
a financial apparatus that, through the KAS organisation,
has financed the entire terrorist plot”,
while affirming that the newspaper Egin and its
publishing company Orain “were linked to
ETA.” The AVT representatives also declared
that the reporting line of the newspaper was tantamount
to an “external Political Council”
outside of the bounds of the Administrative Council,
and that some of the accused acted as “political
commissioners delegated by the military apparatus.”
Regarding the part of Ekin, they simply referred
to the “abundant documentary evidence available”
that not even the prosecutor was able to present
(Molina admitted that he has very little information
on this organisation), while accusing the Joxemi
Zumalabe Foundation of “subverting the constitutional
order as a matter of routine.”
They deemed the testimony regarding torture as
having no credibility, basing their line of accusation
on the testimony of Alegria, Egibar and Txapartegi.
>
up
26/02/07
Sessions 180 and 181
The prosecution wind up their allegations today
Yesterday the prosecutor
concluded his report defending the validity of
the evidence presented by his side. He thus justified
the legitimacy of the declarations obtained from
the accused while in police custody, in spite
of the reports of extreme torture brought to the
court by accused. The prosecutor took refuge in
the fact that no sentence has been handed down
against the civil guards and police that tortured
the accused to confirm the validity of these allegations.
“It is up to the court to decide whether
these statements were made voluntarily.”
He also made a case for the expert and scientific
nature of the statements provided by the Spanish
civil guards and police that testified in the
proceedings.
He repeated the theory that has been waved around
for some years now. He also mentioned the latest
sentence from the Supreme Court in the Jarrai-Haika-Segi
case to maintain that these are the goals and
objectives of an organisation which define its
“terrorist character”, adding that
“the concept of terrorism is not always
identified with an armed organisation per se.”
Based on this, he stated that although neither
KAS, nor the intermediary front [which is how
the prosecutor refers to Egin] nor Ekin nor Xaki
are armed organisations, they participated in
the unitary organisation” made up by ETA.
For this reason, Molina asked the judges to declare
these organisations to be “illicit”,
and to order their dissolution, along with that
of the businesses mentioned in the indictment.
The prosecutor did not include the Joxemi Zumalabe
Foundation in this request, accusing its members
of the crime of collaboration. Enrique Molina
finished his lengthy allocution asking the court
for a guilty verdict for the 52 people still under
indictment.
>
up
20/02/07
Session 179
The prosecutor considers it a crime to be a member
of the independentist left
For a person
to be “meaningful” or “referential”
in the independentist left is in itself a reason
for suspicion for the prosecution in the Spanish
national court. Enrique Molina in proceedings
against several of those who were part of indictment
18/98 the fact that they had attended open meetings
of Batasuna or Jarrai, had travelled to Brussels
as part of a march organised by the pro-amnesty
movement, and even having acted as electoral agent
for EHAK in the 2005 elections.
With regard to Mario Zubiaga, lecturer at the
Basque Public University and member of the Joxemi
Zumalabe Foundation, he indicated that he “is
an important point of reference in the Basque
independentist left”, that he “is
worldly and highly-educated”, and that he
gives lessons on civil disobedience as part of
“putting into practice ETA’s strategy
of disobedience”. For this he requested
seven years of imprisonment. Although he admitted
during the trial that Zubiaga had given civil
disobedience a light and indirect mention, the
prosecutor considered that this “should
not blur” the court’s decision to,
obviously, hand down the requested sentence.
With reference to the Xaki piece, he mentioned
statements made by Mikel Egibar during his arrest
by the Civil Guard and during which he later claimed
to have suffered torture. Based on these statements
he maintained charges against Egibar himself,
Joxe Mari Olarra and Nekane Txapartegi.
Magistrate Póveda’s illness put the
finishing touch on the day’s events.
>
up
19/02/07
Sessions 177 and 178
The prosecutor begins reading his closing arguments
After prosecution
and defence exhibited their written closing arguments
last week, the trial for indictment 18/98 began
reading the reports, in which the two sides will
give a detailed review of what has been brought
to light in the opinion of each during the trial.
During his turn, the prosecutor gave his opinion
on the intense solidarity among those indicted
to establish the fact that they have a relationship
and are of a single mind. “This court will
have witnessed the organisational cohesion found
among the accused, who support each other, coordinate
with each other and feel solidarity amongst one
another. Although they belong to different organisations,
they coordinate with each other to an extent that
would be admirable among other groups.”
After this he once again repeated the idea that
he had endeavoured to communicate to the court,
affirming that “ETA is a terrorist organisation
which is not merely an armed organisation, which
maintains “unity in its criminal activity”
in which the “different organisations by
sector act in a coordinated and synchronised manner.”
He then recited a brief and specific review of
the history of ETA, to wind up his statements
on the organisations and businesses that are on
trial, and to recount the charges brought against
them: KAS would be an “instrument”
used by ETA for “direction of the movement”,
which, at the same time, would control a business
scheme dedicated to maintaining ETA members abroad”
and members of KAS itself. Ekin, according to
this theory, would have been created to “replace”
KAS; Xaki would be the latest version of “ETA’s
external relations”; and the Joxemi Zumalabe
Foundation would have taken the baton from ASK
to continue to “invigorate the popular movement”.
Finally, Egin and its publishing company Orain
S.A. would make up ETA’s “intermediary
front” or “fourth front”.
At this point, the representative of the Attorney
General had no other choice than to admit that
the written charges contained serious errors,
and that several of the charges against the accused
had no legal foundation. Nevertheless, he concluded
that participating in any of these organisations
is at the same time to be an active member of
ETA due to the “divisional theory”.
“All of the structures participating in
that global structure” which for him is
the nationalist left “are contaminated with
the goals and objectives” of ETA.
>
up
12/02/07
Sessions 175 and 176
The defence for indictment 18/98 enters a plea
of not guilty for all charged
The defence
presented their written closing arguments in which,
with a profusion of data and constant references
to what was seen and heard during oral proceedings,
rejected the prosecution’s arguments to
request that all those charged be fully cleared
of all charges.
They considered that during the oral proceedings
lasting 16 months, no “evidence of a crime”
was presented. The attorneys presented the court
with the main arguments from their extensive,
329-page written arguments, in which they refute
the prosecution’s arguments, in both their
general theory as well as in the individual charges.
The defence start off by examining the chapter
on the “structure of ETA and the origin
and evolution of the Koordinadora Abertzale Sozialista
(KAS)", and indicating that “there
is no truth to the notion that all of the organisations,
associations, etc. that the prosecutions places
within the orbit of the Basque independentist
left, make up a single organisation subordinate
to ETA and directed by ETA.” Regarding this
argument they consider that “its origin
arises from extrajudicial and biased spheres of
activity, widely broadcast starting in the 1990s
by certain media organisations. In this respect,
the defence attorneys argue that “this broad
statement (everything is ETA) which the charges
are based upon, have no foundation in the historical
truth or in the sociological truth, and are merely
an artificial construction.”
Further on, the document argues that the so-called
“Udaletxe Project”, which would justify
the existence of a common source of financing,
is nothing more than “an invention by the
police, whose existence was never proven in the
oral proceedings”, according to the defence’s
conclusions.
In reference to the Orain publishing company and
the Egin newspaper, the defence discusses the
communicative functions carried out by the newspaper
in its over twenty years of existence, along with
the financial matters under indictment in the
court, to conclude that there was no criminal
activity in its functions as a newspaper or in
its management as a business, reiterating that
there was an agreement with the General Treasury
of Social Security, which demonstrated a lack
of intent to commit any sort of fraud.
With regard to Ekin, they state that this is a
“new organisational experience”, which
arose after careful consideration of the wants
and needs of the nationalist left in different
areas, and argue that this was not intended to
be a substitute for KAS.
As for the Joxemi Zumalabe Foundation, in addition
to proving that it had nothing to do with ASK,
the attorneys denied that they could have initiated
a “civil-disobedience project for ETA”,
which would have been a contradiction.
Finally, with regard to the part of the Xaki European
Association, the defence remarked that the prosecution
maintains a theory on ETA’s international
relations since ETA has had its own activity in
this area carried out by its own members, so it
would not make sense for this activity to be delegated
to Xaki. They also denounce the fact that most
of the charges in this area are based on statements
extracted under torture.
>
up
06/02/07
Sessions 173 and 174
The State Prosecutor reduces his sentence request
He asks for almost 500 year imprisonment
The Audiencia
Nacional Prosecutor, Enrique Molina, backed by
the Audiencia Nacional Prosecutor General, Javier
Zaragoza, explained his conclusions whereby he
is still maintaining that all the organisations
on trial in this case and others are dependant
on and obey ETA. He is also asking for the defendants
to be sentenced to periods ranging between 4 and
19 years in jail, depending on whether he has
charged them with “cooperation” or
“integration”. The defendants charged
because of their link to the Board of Directors
of the newspaper Egin are the ones facing the
longest terms in jail. When the Prosecutor was
first asking for 927 years imprisonment, now he
is asking for 484. Pepe Uruñuela is the
only person whom the Prosecutor asks to be acquitted.
The lawyer prosecuting on behalf of the AVT backed
the Prosecutor’s request.
As to the contents of the Prosecutor’s report
regarding each of the organisations on trial,
he will hold that, based on what has been said
during the Trial, in the Egin Case, “ETA
took over the newspaper for its mass front, to
use it as anaesthesia from the murders for the
masses close to the BNLM”. As to Ekin, Molina
admits that it had a public presence and activity,
but he insists that it followed ETA’s orders
and because it had “careful security measures
in place, in order to prevent a possible criminalisation
of its activities”. The Prosecutor argued
that ETA has “international relations”
since 1964 and since 1996; the association Xaki
took on that responsibility, specifically to “disseminate
the Democratic Alternative, seeking international
backing for talks”. Finally, he linked the
Joxemi Zumalabe Foundation to TA, saying its remit
was to “develop the track of civil disobedience”.
>
up
05/02/07
Sessions 171 and 172
Following the documentary evidence of the private
prosecution, the tape recordings were heard
During
this session the documents requested by the private
prosecution, acting on behalf of the Asociación
de Víctimas del Terrorismo, were read out.
After this the Court went on to listen to the
recordings of phone conversations of the defendants,
which the State Prosecutor, Enrique Molina, requested.
The defence ascertained that the selected recordings
did not correspond to the list they had been given
and objected o the Prosecutor’s actions,
saying they were “irregular and illegal”.
They also denounced the fact that many parts of
these phone taps were intimate and personal and
they added nothing to the trial.
>
up
30/01/07
Session 170
Reading of the documentary evidence requested
by the State Prosecutor ends
The reading
of the documents the State Prosecution brought
as evidence has taken eight sessions. These sessions
have added nothing new, excepting the repeated
objections by the defence, because there is no
record of the origin of the reports and texts
read out. These sessions have added to the burden
on the defendants who have already had to travel
thousands of kilometres, week after week, to withstand
the reading out of hundreds of documents and listening
to some fifty tapes.
29/01/07
Sessions 168 and 169
Recorded telephone conversations are played back
24/01/07
Session 167
Reading of documentary evidence is concluded
23/01/07
Sessions 165 and 166
Continuation of reading documentary evidence
22/01/07
Sessions 163 and 164
Documentary evidence is read
>
up
17/01/07
Session 162
The Tribunal trying Case 18/98 accepts different
translations from documents in Basque
The defence
had to impugn the translation of several documents
included in Case 18/98 again because, on the one
hand, the people doing the translation into Spanish
have not proved they are adequately qualified
to do this and because these people have attended
the Trial and are therefore biased in their work.
In addition to this, mistaken and misleading translations
carried out by the Guardia Civil and the Policia
Nacional have already been included in the Case
files. The Chair of the Tribunal, Angela Murillo,
accepted the defence’s challenge.
>
up
16/01/07
Sessions 160 and 161
Defendants give reports on torture to the judges
and the State Prosecutor
It is worth
highlighting the prominent role of the defendants
during this session, when they directly gave the
Tribunal and the State Prosecutor several reports
by international bodies about torture in the Spanish
state and the attitude of successive Spanish governments
towards the complaints contained in those reports
and the recommendations made. The reports were
by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Question of
Torture, the UN Committee Against Torture, the
Council of Europe Committee for the Prevention
of Torture and the Commissioner for Human Rights
of the Council of Europe, as well as by NGOs such
as Amnesty International, the World Organisation
Against Torture (OMCT) or the TAT. With this action,
the defendants wished to denounce the fact that
this Trial is according validity to statements
obtained under torture and therefore legitimising
the use of torture.
>
up
15/01/07
Sessions 158 and 159
Documentary evidence phase of the trial begins
The coming
sessions will review and read the various pieces
of documentary evidence included in the Case Files.
Today, the statements made by Mikel Egibar in
Guardia Civil custody and before the judge were
brought up. Mikel Egibar issued a complaint for
torture while in custody.
The defence lawyers made a submission challenging
the list of documents to be read out proposed
by the Prosecution because in some cases this
meant incorporating “new evidence”
as well as because of a number of irregularities
such as lack of dates of the reports of entry
and search of premises, translation certificates…
The Chair of the Tribunal ignored this submission.
>
up
09/01/07
Sessions 156 and 157
The Prosecutor proposes a new list of documents
and recordings be brought in
At the
beginning of the hearing today the defendants
expressed their disagreement with their being
made to attend the reading of over one thousand
pages of documents and listen to innumerable recordings
of phone conversations.
Precisely, State prosecutor Enrique Molina gave
the Tribunal a new list of the documents incorporated
into the Case which he wants to be reading the
coming weeks. The defence insisted that the Prosecutor
was “proposing new evidence” in an
irregular way in terms of procedure and in an
in appropriate way. Therefore, they requested
an adjournment of at least a week in order to
analyse the Prosecutor’s list and decide
their position in regard to this. After a long
meeting between the lawyers and the Tribunal,
after the session, the Trial was adjourned until
Monday 15th January.
>
up
08/01/07
Sessions 154 and 155
The defence relinquishes their expert witnesses
As we wrote
in previous summaries, the statements from the
expert witnesses called by the Prosecution destroyed
the arguments of the Prosecution. Therefore, the
defence decided to relinquish their right to call
their own expert witnesses and bring up their
own documents, as in their view “the defendants
are convinced that result which is favourable
to them has come out of these proceedings, in
other words, the appearance of expert witnesses
called by the Prosecution has thrown up a clearly
negative result for the Prosecutor”. Therefore,
the defence called on the Prosecutor to do likewise
and relinquish the documentary evidence phase
of the Trial, so as to get to the stage of summing
up and final conclusions.
In addition, they called on the Prosecutor to
bear in mind the criteria set by the Audiencia
Nacional Prosecution service regarding the Egunkaria
Case and “proceed to drop all charges and
thus bring about an acquittal of all defendants”.
Precisely, Prosecutor Miguel Angel Carballo gave
a number of legal arguments on December 14, 2006
in order to request Proceedings 44/04, regarding
Egunkaria, be shelved. Thus, the defence believes
the current 18/98 Case has “the very same
structure and nature as the Egunkaria Case, in
which Prosecutor Carballo expressed his “complete
disagreement with the interpretation criteria
used by the Guardia civil and the investigating
judge”. He added that the Prosecution itself
considered that the evidence brought in that case
“cannot establish that the defendants are
involved in an illegal organisation, even less
in a terrorist organisation”.
Enrique Molina did not attend the request by the
defence and decided to go ahead with the documentary
evidence phase of the trial, which will begin
today, with the reading out of the thousands of
pages of documents he has brought into the Case.
This will mean that thousands of pages will have
to be read out and hours of phone tap recordings
will have to be listened to. Therefore, the defence
asked the special Tribunal in charge of this trial
to excuse the defendants from being present, a
load they have had to carry for thirteen months,
saying their presence was not necessary and their
not attending these sessions would not cause defencelessness.
Angela Murillo, in yet another show of authoritarianism,
opposed this. “We’re in no hurry”
she added.
>
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18/12/2006
Session 153
The State Prosecutor admits mistakes in his report
The three
final expert witnesses called by the Prosecution
were three Social Security technicians. In this
session, Enrique Molina admitted that the economic
crimes the Egin directors are charged with are
all based on mistaken premises, so he dropped
the charges linked to the debt with the Social
Security.
>
up
13/12/2006
Session 152
The Treasury expert witnesses point out serious
mistakes in the Prosecutor’s report
The civil
servants from the Treasury (Ministerio de Hacienda)
appearing as expert witnesses admitted that at
the time of writing their reports they did not
know the content, or indeed they did not know
of the existence, of documents that were favourable
to the defence. In addition, they corrected several
matters included by the Prosecutor in his initial
submission and they rejected several of the accusations
brought by the prosecution in this Case.
Iñigo Iruin highlighted the fact that in
their report these expert witnesses indicated
that, in this case, the defendants cannot be simultaneously
charged with a crime of punishable insolvency
-fraudulent conveyance- and a tax crime, because
they are “mutually excluding”, so
that they could be charged with one or the other,
but not both. “This is our criterion”,
said the civil servants. Their criterion, however,
is not being followed by the prosecutor, as he
is charging five of the defendants with both crimes
at the same time. Furthermore, the civil servants
corroborated the idea that, based on the data
given by the defence, the publishing company had
no intent to avoid paying taxes. The expert witnesses
were surprised upon seeing the profit and losses
balance, which they looked through for quite some
time. “Had you examined these documents
before?” asked the defence lawyer. “No,
we had not seen these documents” replied
the Treasury expert. A similar thing happened
with the VAT debt. “That makes no sense”
they stated when they heard of the numbers being
used by the prosecution in this matter.
One of the civil servants confessed that if he
had been aware of many of these documents (which
were public, but have now been brought in by the
defence) his conclusions “would have to
be qualified”.
>
up
12/12/2006
Sessions 150 and 151
According to the Court Administrator the closure
ordered by Garzón caused the bankruptcy
of Egin
Lawyer
José María Elosua requested the
Court Administrator for Egin, who is appearing
as an expert witness in the Trial, be shown a
report with the financial state and the balance
of Orain on December 31, 1998, which the said
Administrator had written. Antonio López
Iranzo admitted that when Baltasar Garzón
ordered its closure, the newspaper was in good
enough condition to continue normally with its
activity and that it was the closure order that
led the journalistic project to bankruptcy. When
Baltasar Garzón ordered the closure of
those companies, he caused them to go bankrupt
and prevented, with his expressly implemented
cautionary measures, this newspaper from seeing
the light again.
In one year of Court Administration a deficit
of millions was generated and the newspaper had
gone from being solvent to being completely insolvent.
The expert witness admitted that “obviously,
a substantial part of that deficit was originated
by the inactivity of the companies, with all its
consequences”. “An important part
of the imbalance was caused by that Court decision”.
When he finished, the civil servants from the
Treasury began their appearance in court. They
spoke of “irregularities” in Egin
accounting. However, following questions by the
defence they admitted they did not know about
part of the documents the UCI and the judge provided
and they said several of those documents may be
relevant: “we don’t know, because
we have not seen them”.
>
up
11/12/2006
Sessions 148 and 149
Beginning of cross examination on economic questions
In this
macro-case, the economic charges brought by the
State Prosecution are the ones that amount the
heaviest sentence requests, but the Audiencia
Nacional is trying these aspects only because
they are accessory to the main charge of “membership
of an armed group”.
The first expert witness to declare on the economic
and commercial issues included in the Case was
the Court Administrator for Egin. Antonio López
Iranzo was designated by Judge Baltasar Garzón
to fulfil this role, consisting in substituting
the Board of Directors whilst the newspaper was
intervened, particularly, to safeguard its interests.
Nevertheless, he stated that Garzón expressly
prevented him from carrying out any actions to
preserve Egin’s assets, which caused the
newspaper’s debt to increase while the paper
was under his administration. He also admitted
that he did nothing to recover what the paper
was owed and the insisted that, contrary to the
word of the law, he safeguarded “the interests
of the State” and not the newspaper’s
interests.
Lawyer Alvaro Reizabal denounced the fact that
Orain was made to pay out millions, many of them
to the Social Security, due to the lack of action
of the administrator who did not attend meetings
or give evidence to counteract demands by creditors.
The Court Administrator even admitted he had don
nothing at all to reimburse amounts Egin was owed,
which would have reduced a large part of the debt.
>
up
05/12/06
Sessions 146 and 147
Cross examination of the UCI (Central Investigation
Unit) “expert” witnesses finishes;
they continue to contradict the Prosecution’s
thesis
During
the month that the Policia Nacional “expert”
witnesses have been cross examined, the bias and
the incompetence with which they wrote their reports
has become obvious. Superintendent 19242 admitted
basic mistakes and that translations of documents
from the Basque had not been done by anyone minimally
qualified to do so. The defence brought up clear
examples of this flawed translation, also proving
that the “expert” police translators
had changed the meaning of several sentences in
crucial documents used to support the charges,
so that entire paragraphs ended up saying the
exact opposite to their original meaning.
But even the highly questionable views of these
“expert” witnesses, their subjective
interpretations, also ended up contradicting the
arguments of the Prosecution: “not all KAS
activists are members of ETA” adding that
they did not know which ones were ETA members.
>
up
04/12/06
Sessions 144 and 145
The UCI admits they cannot establish “Eneko’s”
identity
As happened
previously in the case of Xabier Alegria and his
alleged alias “Garikoitz”, the UCI
was not able to establish that Joxe Mari Olarra
was the “Eneko” cited in several documents.
During cross examination regarding the Xaki piece
of the case (an organisation charged with being
the “Foreign Affairs Ministry of ETA”),
lawyer Iñigo Iruin obtained from the policemen
the confession that they have no evidence to prove
that Joxe Mari Olarra is the person that appears
in the Case documents under the alias of “Eneko”
who, according to the Prosecution, would have
been in contact with the ETA leadership.
Iruin asked the UCI Superintendent: “Isn’t
the identification of “Eneko” as Joxe
Mari Olarra really an extremely open inference?”
“Indeed, it is a rather open question”
was his reply.
Mistakes in translation of documents from the
Basque, gratuitous interpretation of acronyms,
ambiguous use of events, such as Olarra taking
part in the homecoming event for a Basque prisoner
who died in the French state, in events against
the Dam at Itoitz or the High Speed Train had
been used to support the charges. The officer
admitted that he could not prove the arguments
of the Prosecution.
>
up
29/11/06
Session 143
Zumalabe did not act under instructions from ETA
Out of
a total of 27 minutes seized from the Board of
the Joxemi Zumalabe Foundation, only five have
been included in the Case documents; specifically,
those in which the words “civil disobedience”
appear.
One of the “expert” witnesses admitted
that the UCI did this because they though the
content of these documents would incriminate the
defendants.
Indeed, the Spanish policemen base the idea that
“the ETA-KAS civil disobedience project
was taken on by the Joxemi Zumalabe Foundation”
exclusively on these documents. This session’s
work went over the content of these minutes.
The defence continued examination of the “expert”
witnesses regarding the Joxemi Zumalabe Foundation,
charged with “political leadership of the
grassroots movement”. The defendants acknowledged
that their work was to cooperate with all kinds
of grassroots movements in the Basque Country,
affording them legal counsel, cooperating to improve
their public profile, putting the various groups
in touch with each other… The witnesses
said that this was precisely what they did and
the phone taps and surveillance carried out during
nine months back up that idea. The police witnesses
explained that the Foundation’s sphere of
work is diverse and includes hundreds of associations
and groups “from parents’ groups,
mountain clubs or platforms against waste incineration
plants”. Thus, the UCI “expert”
witness denied the Foundation was created to “direct
the grassroots movement”, as the State Prosecution
argues; rather, the officer said it had been created
to cooperate with these organisations with very
diverse roots, work methodology and funding systems.
When lawyer Jose Mari Elosua asked if all this
information was included in his report, officer
19242 admitted they had not.
In addition, he admitted that the funds to set
up this project came from an inheritance Fernando
Olalde received and that all their accounts were
in order.
>
up
28/11/06
Sessions 141 and 142
The CI admits that Ekin cannot be accused of any
criminal actions
Although
in their report the Spanish Police argue that
Ekin succeeded KAS, a thesis that was also brought
into question yesterday, and that its role was
to act as “political commissars” and
“delegates of ETA” in the organisations
of the Basque pro independence left wing; this
thesis was dismantled by the very “expert”
witnesses for the Prosecution. During cross examination
by the defence, the chief of the agents admitted
he cannot accuse the defendants (charged with
being members of the said political group, Ekin)
of any criminal actions. He even admitted that
the organisation Ekin itself cannot be accused
of any concrete actions that may constitute a
crime.
Furthermore, he stated that “there is no
organic structure” linking Ekin to ETA,
and he acknowledged that there are no elements
whatsoever to link the defendants in this piece
to the armed organisation.
The Prosecution also maintains that another function
of Ekin was to apply “activities complementary
to ETA’s activity”, among which they
cited “controlling” the Basque Political
Prisoners’ Collective or “setting
up and initiating complementary violence”.
However, throughout cross examination, the officer
admitted they had no evidence that anyone carried
out such activities due to their membership of
Ekin or following orders from this organisation.
Following questions by the defence, the Police
officer admitted that Ekin’s work began
due to concerns inside the Basque pro independence
left about a deficit in nation building work in
the Basque Country, and that its aim was precisely
to develop work in that sphere, from a global
political outlook. Shortly later, this “expert”
witness stated that the UCI “has not detected”
any elements proving any “subordination”
of Ekin with regard to the armed organisation.
The “expert” witnesses reached a similar
conclusion after going over the supposedly criminal
activities of each of the defendants in this piece.
>
up
27/11/06
Session 139 and 140
Egin was on the road to sorting out its situation
with the Social Security
The session
focused on the Egin piece, specifically on the
agreements reached between the daily newspaper
and the Social Security in order to pay the debt
the paper had incurred with this institution.
The UCI agents admitted they had not included
any data which may favour Egin in the police report
that led to the closure of the newspaper and also
admitted that such data would have changed the
outcome of the report.
The “economic expert witness” had
to face the evidence, as the defence lawyer requested
a document signed by managers of the Social Security
be read; this document explained that Orain SA
had requested deferment of the payment of the
debt and that the publishing company for Egin
fulfilled the “necessary conditions”
and that it “deserves a favourable report”.
The UCI agents stated, only last week, that they
did not know anything about this, which caused
a big stir in the courtroom.
After this, lawyer Arantza Zulueta focused her
questions on the figure of “Garikoitz”,
whom the Spanish police say is Xabier Alegria.
In fact in one of the police reports included
in the Orain piece of the Case, it is said that
“Garikoitz”, who according to the
Prosecution was in contact with the political
apparatus of ETA, would be “a non-identified
member of KAS, possibly a member of the Orain
Management Board”.
It turns out that none of the reports in any of
the various pieces Alegria is charged under, the
Orain piece and the Ekin piece, is he cited as
being “Garikoitz”, and such a mention
did not appear in the reports on his person either.
The “expert” witnesses were unable
to provide any proof for this either.
>
up
22/11/2006
Session 138
The “expert” witnesses prove themselves
not to be independent and the Tribunal is forced
to support them
The UCI
officers are not contributing data which could
inform the Tribunal about facts and thus aid the
course of justice. They are following a pre-set
script as was seen again during this session.
The “expert” witnesses admitted they
had not included the documents proving that Egin
had reached an agreement with the Treasury of
the Social Security in their report on the newspaper.
In other words, they avoided including any elements
which could support the defence’s version.
They admitted this during cross-examination by
defence lawyer Alvaro Reizabal, acknowledging
they ignored all this information in the police
report used to close Egin down, and that if the
information had been included, the conclusions
of the report would have been different. In addition,
the UCI agents had to admit that they have no
objective data which could allow them to say that
Jabier Salutregi and Teresa Toda were appointed
by ETA as Editor and vice-editor of Egin, as the
Prosecution maintains. They were not able to prove
that the Editor of the daily newspaper had a modem
to communicate with the leadership of the armed
organisation either, and they admitted that they
have never found such a device in the offices
of the newspaper.
Conscious of the relevance of this admission,
one of the authors of the report attempted to
correct himself later and the Chair of the Tribunal
not only allowed him to do this, but also skipped
all procedural guarantees to allow him to do this.
>
up
21/11/2006
Sessions 136 and 137
One year since the trial began
On the
day the trial entered its second year, corresponding
to session Nº 136, according to the system
we use for these summaries, the “expert”
witnesses and the Prosecution continued to argue
that the publishing company for the daily Egin,
Orain S.A. his its assets from the Social security
in order to avoid seizure due to the debt undertaken
with the said institution. This is the basis of
the charges against the newspaper. After the defence
showed the seizure documents, this argument collapsed.
However, the truly inexplicable part is how the
idea that the newspaper was operating as part
of the armed organisation can be inferred from
a problem of debt with the Social Security. This
attempt at inference is, also, compulsive: the
UCI officers maintain that the Egin investigation
team gave information to ETA and “marked
targets” for the armed group. These “expert”
witnesses did not know that there has already
been a trial on this question and that an Audiencia
Nacional decision stated that the investigation
team’s work was “legitimate journalistic
investigation”.
The really
serious aspect is that the cautionary closure
of the newspaper was based on these charges of
“membership of an armed group”.
>
up
20/11/2006
Sessions 134 and 135
A crack in the “expert” witnesses’
monolithic statements
Following
questions by the defence, the head of the UCI
witnesses admitted that “I do not believe
all KAS members are also members of ETA”
and that he cannot determine which ones would
allegedly be linked to the armed organisation.
He acknowledged that “not everything is
ETA”. This statement was preceded by other
assertions which questioned a large proportion
of the Prosecution’s thesis.
According
to the head of the UCI, the link between the armed
organisation and KAS took place at the so-called
“National KAS” the leadership organ
wherein, in his view, ETA took part. But he had
to admit that he did not know the identity of
any members of that “National KAS”
and that nobody had ever been arrested for this
reason.
He also
had to yield to evidence and admit important mistakes
in a police report that he had written and used
to support the argument that KAS controlled all
the organisations in the Basque left-wing independence
movement, following ETA guidelines. The authorship
of the document was mistaken –it had been
attributed to KAS, when it really belonged to
another organisation, ASK- and it does not refer
to KAS or ETA at any point, nor does it mention
any alleged links between them.
Referring
to the paper “KAS Bloque Dirigente”,
dated 1983 and which set out the structure of
the KAS coordinator, wherefrom the police officers
“infer” that ETA took part in KAS,
the “expert” witness has to admit
that the paper expressly referred to HASI, Jarrai,
LAB, ASK and an organisation which would represent
the feminist movement as the organisations that
were part of the Koordinadora Abertzale Sozialista,
and it never referred to ETA and even less anything
regarding an alleged “golden share”
of the armed organisation’s, as the Prosecution
is arguing.
Nevertheless,
in order to support his thesis, the UCI Superintendent
argued that there was no need for this to be on
paper for it to actually be so and he defended
himself saying: “I interpret the document.
If the document itself said this or that, there
would be no need for an expert witness to back
it up”. Still, he concluded saying that
“we have no evidence of any participation;
we cannot say that there was an organic relationship
between the two organisations”.
A
similar thing happened when reference was made
to “illegal struggles” sabotage and
similar actions, the implementation of which ETA
would have allegedly transferred to KAS. The Police
“expert” acknowledged that there was
no structure inside KAS devoted to organising
these kinds of actions.
>
up
14/11/06
Session 133
Any seized material amounts to incriminating evidence
Counsel
for the defence cross examined the UCI agents
about the individual reports on the people charged
in the Companies piece of Case 18/98, paying special
attention to effects seized in their homes and
workplaces, which the police described as being
“especially interesting for the investigation”.
In most cases, these documents and goods were
not related to the Case and, as was shown, have
no incriminating value. However, in the police
reports it is said that this kind of personal
effects “corroborate” the accusation.
After being asked about several of these seized
belongings –in certain cases quite ridiculously
seized, being objects linked to football supporters
groups, choirs, Batasuna material (still legal
at the time) and personal receipts and payment
slips- the authors of the reports were unable
to say exactly how these objects were incriminating.
The defence asked the author of the report whether
“when you were writing this report, were
you acting impartially?” “Absolutely”
replied the police “expert”.
>
up
13/11/06
Sessions 131 and 132
The prosecution in Case 18/98 cannot certify authorship
of the “Udaletxe Project”
The
“Udaletxe Project” is the cornerstone
of the Prosecution’s argument that, following
investigation judge Baltasar Garzón’s
thesis, “everything is ETA”. This
alleged project would establish joint funding
quotas –what has become known as the “single
cashbox”- for all the organisations that
the Prosecution is attempting to equate to ETA.
However, the UCI “economic expert”
had to admit that the UCI itself had previously
produced another report denying the existence
of such a thing. Lawyer Kepa Landa asked him about
a document written by the UCI in September 1997,
which expressly contradicts the Prosecution’s
thesis on the “financing of the ETA network”;
the “expert” witness confessed he
was “the first one to be surprised”
about the document. This document explicitly contradicts
the Prosecution’s theory of the aforementioned
“financing of the ETA network” that
this “expert witness developed in a second
report in February 1998. Beyond the doubts about
which particular operational group in the UCI
wrote that report, the witness had to admit they
obviously contradicted each other.
The “expert” witness was not able
to specify the identity of the alleged author
of the “Udaletxe project” either.
I don’t know the identity of the author
of those documents; only know they were seized
from ETA in Bidart”. Asked whether all the
documents found in Bidart belonged to ETA, the
agent replied “I think so”. When the
lawyer for the defence reminded him that in that
operation the police found documents from political
parties such as the PNV, from various social actors
and organisations, the police “expert”
was only able to say that “I would like
to think that if it has been found in possession
of ETA, it was written by somebody from that environment”.
>
up
08/11/06
Session 130
Prosecution questioning of Policía Nacional
witnesses ends
Referring
to the Xaki piece of the Case, the Spanish Police
“expert witnesses” maintained the
Prosecution thesis that this legal association,
inscribed in the Basque Government register of
associations, is the “Foreign Relations
Apparatus of ETA”. In order to do so, the
chief of the UCI insisted that the European Association
Xaki was the “successor to KHK and to KEA
as the organ for foreign relations” of the
Basque armed organisation. He stated that ETA
had “structural hierarchy and superiority
in command” over Xaki, and that it “gave
instructions, orders and corrected Xaki members’
actions”.
Several defendants in this piece have declared
in court that they were not even part of Xaki,
but that those who were stated that their work
was legal, public and their aims were “to
publicise the political and social situation of
the Basque Country in the international sphere”.
Responding to this, the UCI agent stated that
“although their public image” was
that of representatives of the Basque independence
party “in reality” they were members
of Xaki and, as such, they followed ETA guidelines.
In this session, the State Prosecutor, Enrique
Molina, finished going over the Xaki piece and
the personal charges against the defendants in
the piece. After him, the lawyer for the private
prosecution, carried by the AVT, asked a very
few questions to the “expert” witnesses.
>
up
07/11/06
Sessions 128 and 129
“Expert” witnesses do not testify
what the Prosecution, who called them, needs them
to say
The session
began with “expert” witness 16586,
who stated that the publishing company Erigane,
linked to the daily Egin was “a front in
order to aid hiding of assets”, accusing
Xabi Otero of being the only administrator of
this business. In order to give his statement
more emphasis, he added the fact that “this
person was a member of the local committee of
a village in Pamplona”. It would seem that
being a councillor in the town of Atarrabia is
an incriminating element.
After this, the State Prosecutor questioned the
“expert” witnesses about the Joxemi
Zumalabe Foundation. He attempted to correct a
statement by chief inspector 19242 who had said
that “it cannot be said that the Joxemi
Zumalabe Foundation was a substitute for ASK”.
ASK, an umbrella group for social movements, was
part of KAS and this statement would destroy the
theory of continuity between the two organisations.
Prosecutor Enrique Molina wanted “expert”
witness 19242 to ratify that the Foundation “substituted
ASK in its functions” and he replied that
“what we are saying is that when ASK disappeared,
another organisation was born, which worked in
the same sphere and together with the same organisations”.
Continuing to harass the witness he himself had
called, the prosecutor asked him whether he “believes
that there was an attempt to disguise the relationship
between the Foundation and ETA in order to develop
the strategy of civil disobedience”. “No,
based on the documents I have, I cannot say there
was such an attempt” was the answer.
>
up
06/11/06
Sessions 126 and 127
“Large companies’ project” in
order to fund ETA
Referring
to the private businesses included in the Case,
which the prosecution contends that are part of
the “funding project developed by ETA-KAS”
allegedly called “Udaletxe project”,
“expert” witness 16586 stated that
“ETA set the sources of funding for the
Basque pro-independence left”. Specifying
these sources, he listed raffles and lotteries,
Txosnas (open air food and drink stalls set up
during fiesta in towns and villages), selling
T-shirts and clothes, a Mus –card game-
championship organised every year by Egin…
He also referred to other organisations against
which there are no charges, accusing them of being
part of the “large companies in the Udaletxe
Project” such as AEK –an organisation
that teaches the Basque language to adults- and
the publishing house Txalaparta.
Also, “expert” witness 19242 declared
on the intensive tailing of defendants, spying
on their contacts and conversations with members
of organisations that are not subject to proceedings,
or with friends… He thus wanted to prove
that some of the defendants are members of the
organisation Ekin, despite their already having
admitted to this in their statements to the Court.
However, he admitted that “we have no proof
of any organic activity by Ekin” and therefore,
they have no proof of any criminal activity. The
Prosecutor is requesting twelve years in prison
for these defendants.
>
up
31/10/06
Sessions 124 and 125
The UCI believes KAS did not work as a “political
commissar”
Policía
Nacional officer Nº 19242 began his appearance
in court with the conclusion that “the entire
Basque pro-independence left-wing movement depends
on ETA”. This chief inspector arrived at
this conclusion through the “inductive method”
which leads him to attribute the identities of
“Garikoitz” and “Eneko”
to Xabier Alegria and Joxe Mari Olarra, respectively.
These names allegedly appear in documents seized
from ETA and they would allegedly correspond to
members of the KAS executive. Following questions
from the Public Prosecutor, agent 19242 explained
that this method works by “extracting particularly
significant circumstances” from seized documents
and then chocking them against the profiles of
different people until “the circle is closed”.
But, as it turns out, some of the data cited by
the police officers are incorrect or they cannot
be proven.
The “expert” witness who is acting
as spokesman and chief of the group argued that
former organisations are substituted by the organisations
now on trial: KAS would have allegedly been substituted
by Ekin, ASK would have an equivalent in the Joxemi
Zumalabe Foundation, and Xaki would have replaced
KHK. Nevertheless, having said this, the very
same policeman admitted that “it cannot
be said that the Joxemi Zumalabe Foundation is
a substitute for ASK, because it is broader, it
carries out more functions and it has a greater
capacity”. However, Ekin was indeed a substitute
for KAS because “they had the same artisan
funding system, based on selling raffle tickets,
membership fees and sale of material” and
they both defended independence and socialism
as their main aims. However, he contradicted the
prosecution and the Guardia Civil “expert”
witnesses by saying that it was not one of Ekin’s
functions to act as a political commissar in other
organisations and to exercise “dirigisme
over them”, as the prosecution maintains.
On the contrary, Spanish policeman Nº 19242
indicated this organisation was devoted to “dynamising”
the activity of sectorial organisations.
>
up
30/10/06
Session 123
UCI agents begin testifying as expert witnesses
After two
months of Guardia Civil officers testifying, rather
questionably, as expert witnesses, the Tribunal
accepted the same status for UCI (Unidad Central
de Inteligencia, of the Policía Nacional)
agents called by the Prosecution. In a decision
she wrote herself, the Chair of this Tribunal,
Angela Murillo, rejected expert witness status
for members of the security forces who testified
in the trial against an alleged “Al Quaeda
cell” earlier this year. It would seem that
her previous interpretation is no good for this
trial, as the Tribunal, despite the opposition
of the defence, insisted on granting this “expert
witness” status to the members of the Security
Forces called by the Prosecution.
At the beginning of their appearance, the Chair
herself suspended their appearance after the “expert”
witnesses were unable to recognise several of
the reports that they had signed. Murillo gave
half a day for the officers to specify who had
written each report, which caused a unanimous
protest by all the defence lawyers.
Lawyer Iruin criticised the fact that “this
phase of the trial is going ahead when the Court
has still not issued a decision on the challenge
and objection brought by this defence in January
2005 against the expert witnesses proposed by
the Public Prosecution, wherein we submitted the
arguments whereby the defence considers the bias
of these officers blatant.”
>
up
25/10/06
Session 122
“Expert” witnesses and the
shadow of torture
Cross-examination
of the Guardia Civil “expert” witnesses
finished with a question by the defence about
the organisational structure of KAS. The prosecution
maintains that ETA took part in KAS meetings and
directed this umbrella-groups activity. However,
the only document in the case Files, “Ponencia
KAS Bloque Dirigente” refers to HASI, LAB,
ASK and Jarrai as sectorial organisations of KAS,
and it underlines that all decisions will be taken
“by mutual agreement and consensus”.
This statement contradicts the alleged “golden
share” of ETA. A guardia civil denied this:
that is what the paper says, then there is reality”
adding that there are other documents not included
in the files which support the prosecution’s
theory. On this point, Arantza Zulueta, lawyer
for the defence, said “you have lots of
documents, but it turns out that the only one
included in your report does not support your
conclusions”.
With cross examination of the Information Services
finished, Mikel Egibar, one of the defendants
stood up and claimed his right to ask questions
to the “expert” witnesses, appealing
to article 6 of the European Convention ion Human
Rights. Egibar had recognised the commander of
the “expert” witnesses, who used number
G-96330-W to identify himself, as one of the people
who took part in the torture sessions he suffered
during detention and he wished to ask him about
these events. The Chair of the Tribunal, Angela
Murillo, did not even listen to Egibar’s
request; she lost he nerve and began shouting
“sit down, shut up!” while the Spanish
policemen in the courtroom deployed and stood
forming a human wall between the guardia civil
witnesses and the defendants, while the latter
shouted “torturers!”. Murillo, completely
overcome by the situation, adjourned the session.
>
up
24/10/06
Sessions 120 and 121
Accusations with no documentary support and subjective
statements
The Prosecution
holds that the defendants who were allegedly linked
to Ekin “applied a political-military strategy
shared with ETA; carried out coercion and acted
as political commissars and controlled the prisoners’
collective”. When asked about these matters,
the “expert” witnesses had to admit
that none of the documents they brought to the
case refers, even briefly, to these alleged functions
of Ekin. Thus, it was proven that there is no
documentary support for the thesis these witnesses
have defended in Court.
Arantza Zulueta, lawyer for the defence, had to
ask up to five times which document in the Case
Files mentions these activities. Even the Chair
of the Tribunal, in view of the way the witnesses
avoided giving a straight reply, asked whether
there was “any document where that was said”.
When the guardia civil witnesses admitted there
is no such document, one of them blurted out:
“I know what Ekin’s function is, I
have documents, but I can’t use them, and
there is no reference to this in any of the documents
used in the Case.” Thus Zulueta dismantled,
one by one, all the statements made by the Public
Prosecutor, the Private Prosecution and the guardia
civil officers themselves in their reports.
After the cross examination regarding the Ekin
piece was finished, the “general”
part of the Case was on the agenda. Here, there
was yet another example of the quality of the
information given by the “expert”
witnesses from the Guardia Civil Information Service,
which is supposedly objective and scientific –and
therefore unquestionable and infallible.
Lawyer Iñigo Iruin mentioned elements from
other reports, which have been rejected, such
as the statement that “the Democratic Alternative
is intrinsically evil and illegal”; “HB
is an alienated puppet”; “the intrinsic
evil and the fallacy that HB is putting forward
as a method for conflict resolution is shocking”;
“political negotiation will never serve
to bring peace”; and “political negotiation
should be persecuted by the courts as a crime
of cooperation with an armed group”. According
to the lawyer, in that report the authors admit
that their final aim is “to criminalise
KAS and to incriminate its leaders” by portraying
them as being in ETA’s service.
>
up
23/10/06
Sessions 118 and 119
The defence uncovers a cover-up of information
in the “expert” report
During
cross examination regarding the Joxemi Zumalabe
piece, the defence showed that the guardia civil
appearing as expert witnesses covered up data
that contradicted their thesis. Specifically,
the agents from the Information Service maintain
that the Bai Euskal Herriari initiative –the
association that produces EHNA, the Basque ID
card- is dependent upon ETA and it “is part
of the civil disobedience strategy” they
attribute to the armed group. In a report included
in the Case they avoided all the elements that
might question their argument: they did not include
people and organisations that had no link to the
Basque pro-independence left in the list of people
and organisations supporting the initiative, they
covered up information about the aims of the initiative…
During cross examination regarding the Ekin piece,
the “expert” witnesses were forced
to admit that a large part of the report defending
their theory is nothing but a compilation of articles
from newspapers, mostly from “El Mundo”.
In addition, the defence
requested a document admitted as evidence be scrapped
from the Case Files. This document was attributed
to ETA by the Prosecution and was allegedly seized
in an HB office, but it has no signature and no
stamp and it has a different date to the date
of the search of the offices. The Tribunal will
give its decision on this issue.
>
up
17/10/06
Session 117
Andoni Diaz’s situation ratified and new
adjournment
This
session, which was expected to be adjourned, did
not begin until 11.15, after waiting for news
on the state of Andoni Diaz. It only lasted a
few minutes. The secretary read out the report
by the forensic doctor who stated that Andoni
Diaz suffers “a moderately severe acute
pancreatitis” and that he would be unable
to attend the trial until the following Monday.
After discussion on the aforementioned arguments
about the obligation of all defendants to attend
all hearings or a departure from this principle
which the Tribunal is opposed to, despite agreeing
on some exceptions, the Chair ordered a recess.
The decision she later communicated to the parties
was based on alleged contradictions in the forensic
report and ordered the forensic doctor of the
Bilbao Hospital to write a full report on the
defendant’s condition and then inform the
Audiencia Nacional doctor. The defendants were
summoned for 17.00 hours, when the results were
expected.
Nobody doubted that this decision was due to the
Chair’s annoyance because of the adjournment
request. After a four-hour wait, the forensic
doctor’s report was unequivocal: Diaz’s
condition would not allow him to travel to Madrid
and recommended five days of rest. His Audiencia
Nacional colleague ratified this diagnosis.
Judge Murillo had no option but to adjourn the
trial until Monday, although she took the opportunity
to accuse the defence of “using dilatory
tactics”. Lawyer Kepa Landa had to remind
her that she was the person who caused this situation,
by obliging all the defendants to travel to Madrid
every week.
> up
16/10/06
Session 116
Adjournment due to Andoni Diaz’s
illness
The session
yesterday was adjourned due to the pancreatitis
with which Andoni Diaz has been diagnosed. His
defence counsel requested an adjournment and linked
this request to the decision previously made by
the Tribunal, which stated that all the defendants
were to be in the Courtroom during the entire
trial. The lawyers asked the Tribunal to change
this decision, which does not only affect this
specific case, but would also free defendants
of the obligation to travel to Madrid every week
and attend all the sessions.
Andoni Diaz is in
hospital, awaiting definitive diagnosis; depending
on this diagnosis, the Tribunal will make its
definitive decision to adjourn the trial or leave
Diaz out of the case, as has already been done
with Iñigo Elkoro and Ramón Aranguren.
>
up
11/10/06
Sessions 114 and 115
The “expert witnesses” say
that ETA promotes civil disobedience
Discussion
of the activities of the Joxemi Zumalabe Foundation
led the “expert witnesses” to talk
about the civil disobedience developed “following
orders from ETA”. Although this from of
struggle is known around the world and peaceful
by definition, therefore opposed to ETA’s
armed activity, these witnesses maintain that
the difference is that ETA is behind the people
in the dock. The officers were unable to give
the name of a single armed organisation, except
for the Basque one, involved in civil disobedience.
The session delved into definitions, practices
and concepts used in the Guardia Civil report
and other texts, including press articles and
ETA documents, in an attempt to shed light on
the concept of civil disobedience and its protagonists.
The “expert witnesses” shielded behind
what they said “ETA says”, but through
cross examination it was made clear that this
was their own interpretation of events.
>
up
10/10/06
Sessions 112 and 113
"Secret techniques" for inferring
conclusions by the "expert witnesses"
Tension
in the development of cross examination of the
“expert witnesses” is increasing due
to the continuous contradictions in their statements,
the mistakes in their reports and their provocative
attitude towards the defence lawyers. When they
run into difficulties with their explanations
they say that the techniques used to reach their
conclusions must be kept in secret.
This was what happened during the controversy
about the allocation of the pseudonym Garikoitz
to Xabier Alegria. According to the prosecution
this was the pseudonym of the person who acted
as the link between Orain (the publishing company
for Egin) and ETA. The Guardia Civil maintains
that, during the early stages of interrogation,
both Alegria himself and Mikel Egibar acknowledged
that it was Alegria’s pseudonym. However,
following questions from the defence, the officers
admitted that Egibar never said such a thing and
that Alegría revoked his police statement
before the judge. At the time, both these defendants
claimed they had been tortured during detention.
After finishing the debate on this issue, the
court went on to the alleged connection of social
movements to ETA, analysing the report with which
the Guardia Civil is trying to link the Joxemi
Zumalabe Foundation to ETA. The “expert
witnesses” were unable to say neither when
the investigation began nor who ordered them to
begin. Asked about their investigation methods,
they chose to use the same tactics and say they
cannot reveal them because they are secret. One
of these “expert” guardia civil even
said: “I cannot tell you because I cannot
explain the reasons why I cannot tell you”.
>
up
09/10/06
Sessions 110 and 111
“Expert witnesses” show the frailty
of their arguments
During
these sessions, the “expert witnesses”
continued testifying about the alleged link between
the newspaper Egin and ETA. In their statements
they referred to a document which is also included
in the Egunkaria Case, which is an attempt to
prove, in a general way that both these media
projects (which are unconnected to each other)
are means of broadcasting “ETA’s actions”.
They insisted that “ETA found in Egin the
means of communication it needed” because
“it is essential for ETA to have a medium
to broadcast its actions”. They even resorted
to the old topic “Egin sets the target,
HB aims, ETA shoots”.
There was also controversy about the magazine
Euskadi Información, which went out of
print in 1994 and briefly reappeared when Egin
was closed, with a view to cover the information
gap left by Egin at a time when political activity
in the Basque Country was frantic due to the rapid
development of the political situation. The Guardia
Civil commander defended his views by saying that
“even children […] know that Euskadi
Información substituted Egin”. Although
the said magazine may well have catered for the
readers orphaned by the closure of Egin, it has
still been impossible to prove any link between
the two companies. Throughout the session, all
the documents brought in to support the said thesis
were discredited.
Overall, the attitude of the “expert witnesses”
was markedly arrogant, constantly interrupting
the defence lawyers and straying from the questions
they had been asked. The Chair of the Tribunal,
Angela Murillo, had to intervene and call them
to attention several times during the session.
>
up
04/10/06
Session 109
More contradictions between the police report
and the statements of the “expert witnesses”
Cross examination
by the defence is helping to show up the mistakes
in the reports, which have to be constantly corrected
by the Guardia Civil officers because of the questions
asked by the defence lawyers.
These mistakes affect several issues: the meaning
of code words allegedly found in ETA documents,
the alleged appointment by ETA of Jabier Salutregi
and Teresa Toda as editor in chief and editor
at Egin, 86 people allegedly linked to Egin and
therefore to the “ETA-KAS network”
and who simply sent an opinion article to the
newspaper or were workers in various areas: technicians,
administration staff, and even people who worked
in companies with a commercial relationship with
the newspaper. The “expert witnesses”
excused themselves saying: “it’s clear
that there are several mistakes in that report,
and some of them are evident”.
However, the defence lawyers saw a possible crime
of document forging and perjury in this constant
lack of consistency. The State Prosecutor came
out to defend his “expert witnesses”
and, after praising their work, he even insinuated
that one of the defence lawyers, Mr. Elosua, may
be committing a crime of “slander”
against them.
>
up
03/10/06
Sessions 107 and 108
Tribunal Chair, Angela Murillo, challenged
by the defence again
Following
yet another confrontation between Angela Murillo
and one of the defence lawyers, Alvaro Reizabal,
about the mis-identification of one of the police
expert witnesses, who instead of being identified
with their name and surname use their police number,
Judge Murillo was challenged by the defence. The
specific reason was that she expressed her willingness
for one of the “expert witnesses”
to testify despite the fact that his number did
not coincide with the number of the officer who
had signed the report and therefore, it was impossible
to certify this was the person who had signed
the said report. It is not a mere formality, because
if the officer of the Spanish military institution
were unable to testify because he could not be
correctly identified, the said report on the Egin
Piece of the Case would be void. The Court decided
to continue the hearing and met for an hour in
the afternoon in order to reject the challenge
issued by the defence. This is the third time
the defence has brought a challenge against the
Tribunal Chair, all with the same outcome.
Later on, Murillo rushed to the aid of another
guardia civil who could not answer a question
by the defence. Lawyer Elosua complained that
Murillo “is helping to consolidate the evidence
brought by the prosecution and is blocking the
work of the defence”.
As to the content of cross examination, it is
important to point out that the “expert
witnesses” were unable to prove the point
made by the Prosecution: that Egin managers were
designated by ETA: “we do not know for a
fact whether they were appointed by ETA or not”
said the chief “expert witness”, acknowledging
mistakes in his report about the appointment of
Ramon Uranga as a chief exec at Orain S.A. which
they attempted to attribute to ETA.
An “expert witness” referred to the
report on the entry and search of Egin premises,
presenting himself as one of the authors. His
colleagues quickly prompted him top correct this
statement, upon which he said, “I don’t
remember” referring to the origin of the
report. The lawyer for the defence reminded the
Court that the raid against Egin was carried out
by the Policía Nacional, and therefore
a member of the Guardia Civil could not have taken
part in the minutes of the search. Murillo, rather
than reproaching the attitude of the witness’
colleagues (who as is known, are appearing together
in court) resolved the issue saying:” he’s
said he doesn’t remember”.
>
up
02/10/06
Sessions 105 and 106
One of the “expert” witnesses is identified
as one of the people who tortured defendants
This identification
is important in proving that the “expert
witnesses” were involved in the investigation
of the case and therefore, the absolute lack of
independence of these Guardia Civil officers and
their unacceptability as “expert witnesses”
in the trial. Indeed, the role of expert witnesses
is to contribute with objective scientific-technical
knowledge the Tribunal does not have. However,
the most serious aspect of this is that Nekane
Txapartegi and Mikel Egibar both identified the
Guardia Civil Commander, agent Nº G-96330-W,
who is the chief of the expert witnesses, as one
of the people who tortured them. This “expert”
witness’ testimony is almost exclusively
based on the statements made by Mikel Egibar during
hi incommunicado detention.
During cross-examination, the defence lawyer tried
to ask this person about the issue, but the Chair
of the Tribunal, Angela Murillo, did not allow
him to ask any of these questions. The lawyer
objected and complained that the possibility of
challenging this “expert witness”
for “express enmity” was being blocked;
therefore the right of defendants to “a
trial with full guarantees and their right to
a defence” were being damaged.
During the session, defence lawyers continued
with cross examination of the Guardia Civil “expert
witnesses”, showing their inability to act
as experts. In view of their difficulties to explain
what qualifications they had to back up the scientific
knowledge which would allow them to testify as
experts, defence lawyer Kepa Landa stated: “these
are not experts; they are policemen who write
police reports”.
>
up
25/09/06
Session 104
Session adjourned alter receiving news of the
death of the father of defendant Xabier Alegria
Although
the decease of Alegria’s father would not
be one of the reasons contemplated in law for
requesting an adjournment of the oral hearing,
lawyer Arantza Zulueta asked the magistrates to
allow the defendant to return to the Basque Country
and join his family. The lawyer argued that since,
right from the beginning of the trial, the Tribunal
had decreed all defendants’ “obligation
and duty” to attend all the sessions and
Alegria’s right to follow the sessions live,
the session should be adjourned until next Monday,
after the funeral. Neither the Prosecutor nor
the AVT representative objected to the request
and, after a brief recess, the Tribunal ordered
an adjournment until next week.
The morning session was opened by the prosecutor,
who continued examination of Guardia Civil officers.
The officers, who as expert witnesses are expected
to offer explanations in an objective manner and
in scientific or technical terms, continued giving
opinions and did not miss the opportunity to use
expressions such as “we can infer”
or “we deduced”, basing their arguments
on “deduction” rather than evidence
or objective facts.
The State Prosecutor has used six sessions to
examine the Guardia Civil “expert witnesses”,
although the lawyer for the AVT had to remind
the Chair of the Tribunal that he was in the room,
when after the Prosecutor finished, she gave the
floor to the defence lawyers (when it was the
turn of the AVT prosecution lawyer). The lawyers
carrying the prosecution for this association
(there are two lawyers taking turns) used about
an hour for all their questions.
>
up
20/09/06
Session 103
Basque independence movement, or the infinite
multiple of ETA
The Guardia
Civil “expert witnesses” continued
talking about “ETA’s international
relations apparatus” during today’s
session. They told the Court they see the Basque
pro-independence left wing movement as an “infinite
multiple” led by the armed organisation.
Thus, they placed the organisation Xaki within
the “ETA International Relations Apparatus”,
despite acknowledging that Xaki was publicly created
as a European Association in July 1996 and until
the police raid ordered by Baltasar Garzón
it carried out its work openly, giving press conferences
and publishing its opinions, which dos not seem
exactly compatible with being part of a clandestine
organisation.
>
up
19/09/06
Session 102
The guardia civil blame civil disobedience on
ETA
The Guardia
Civil “expert witnesses” stated that
civil disobedience is “yet another front
of struggle” of ETA’s, and placed
the demand for Basque national sports teams, tax
objection, etc. within this alleged strategy of
ETA’s. In support of this thesis, they showed
documents allegedly seized not only from ETA,
but form other organisations too. However, they
admitted that the documents do not talk of using
civil disobedience, but rather, that they are
documents about the theory of civil disobedience.
Thus, one of the documents deals with a discussion
on activating civil disobedience strategies, not
only by the independence movement, but also by
all the parties and trade unions that signed the
“Lizarra Garazi Pact”, mentioning
the PNV explicitly. The “expert witnesses”
nevertheless do not include this party or the
other signatories of Lizarra Garazi within “ETA’s
civil disobedience strategy”.
During today’s session there was long discussion
about the document called “Piztu Euskal
Herria”, which was also dealt with at the
Audiencia Nacional when the author of the document,
Mikel Zuluaga, stood in the dock. Zuluaga, who
even organised a press conference to claim responsibility
for the document shortly before his arrest, explained
how he had written the document with contributions
from many people (a large number of which testified
before the Court and corroborated this) as a framework
for reflection and discussion among social movements.
Still, the “expert witnesses” kept
insisting that civil disobedience is an ETA strategy
and attempting to link ETA to any organisation
that had discussed civil disobedience, in a series
of involved explanations, mixing up dates and
organisations. For example, they mentioned the
newspaper Egin, or Christian publications, but
forgot other kinds of organisations or publications
with different political outlooks, which also
carried out analyses about civil disobedience.
>
up
18/09/06
Sessions 100 and 101
In the middle of the expert witness phase, the
Court brings in a guardia civil who had not appeared
to date
Contrary
to the criteria of the defence, the Tribunal had
decided all the guardia civil should appear together,
and ordered the beginning of cross examination,
despite the fact that several of the guardia civil
called as witnesses had not appeared. During today’s
session, one of these guardia civil turned up
for the first time and the Court allowed him to
join the proceedings, even though the expert witness
phase had begun.
Lawyer Kepa Landa criticised the Tribunal for
not informing the defence of who had requested
this witness and in what circumstances he was
appearing, and he reminded the Tribunal that it
is the Ley de Enjuciamiento Criminal (Criminal
Procedure Law) and not the parties to a trial
who decide the proceeding for incorporating an
expert witness.
Following a recess, the Chair of the Tribunal
announced the new “expert witness”,
a Guardia Civil Commander, will join the group
of “expert witnesses” and asking Landa
to explain how his appearing in Court could damage
the defence.
The lawyer highlighted the fact that this new
“expert witness” is one of the people
who signed the 18/98 report, which refers to the
alleged link between ETA and Egin. This person
can hardly ratify testimonies about his report
given on Wednesday, when he did not attend the
hearing. For an expert witness report to be valid
as evidence it must be defended before the Court
by at least two of the people who wrote it, therefore,
without incorporating this new witness, the piece
of evidence would have no validity. According
to the defence, this last minute incorporation
of a witness seeks to “make up for a mistake”
made by the State Prosecution.
The Prosecutor angrily replied that “I have
not brought him or made any phone calls for him
to come”. He insisted that he had requested
this witness’ appearance before the beginning
of the trial and argued that he had been unable
to attend because he was “overseas”.
The Prosecutor even said that “objections
by the defence [against procedural irregularities]
should be curtailed”.
>
up
13/09/06
Session 99
“Expert” witnesses say 70 organisation
follow orders from ETA
During
today’s session, the guardia civil testifying
at the Audiencia Nacional in expert witness capacity
have tried to prove the theory of “everything
is ETA”, although, paradoxically, their
statements have shown the theory up.
The guardia civil described some 70 Basque organisations
and association as following orders from ETA,
basing their statements on reports written by
themselves and partial interpretations of documents
seized from various organisations. These documents
would allegedly contain the codes ETA allegedly
set for BNLM organisations and which, according
to these witnesses’ reasoning, would be
under the control of the armed organisation.
When the Prosecutor asked whether being in that
list of codes meant necessarily being a part of
the BNLM, one of the witnesses promptly said:
“as any trained observer can see, none of
the organisations mentioned here are outside the
BNLM”; from leisure clubs to immigrant aid
associations, a Christian-grassroots magazine,
newspapers, and publishing houses (they see the
fact that the publishing house Txalaparta published
the encyclopaedia “Basque Country and Freedom”
about the history of the armed organisation definitive
evidence that the publishing house is part of
this “network”)
As to the alleged link between the closed-down
newspaper Egin and ETA, the Guardia Civil continuously
refers to 59 documents in which ETA members allegedly
made assessments and expressed opinions about
its editorial line etc. Some of these documents
were not even seized from ETA, rather, they are
bulletins and other documents seized from other
organisations; although the witnesses acknowledged
that “they were not necessarily written
by ETA”, one of the guardia civil expressed
his belief that “the fact that the Gestoras
pro Amnistia group of lawyers is interested in
Egin is indeed relevant, because it is an example
of how everything in that world is interconnected
and that, at the end of the day, everyone is talking
and expressing views on Egin”.
Among the evidence the “expert” witnesses
used to argue that Egin was dependent on ETA aims
and guidelines, they indicated that, when the
Ertzaintza arrested the members of an ETA cell,
there were several press cuttings from Egin among
the documents seized.
>
up
12/09/06
Sessions 97 and 98
“Expert” witnesses continue trying
to link Basque organisations that are not involved
in any legal proceedings to ETA
When today’s
session was about to begin, the Tribunal has realised
one of the guardia civil due to testify was missing.
Specifically, the missing witness was the chief
of the group, a commander who on Monday boasted
of his relations with the FBI, the CIA and the
Mossad. Neither the judges nor the Prosecutor
knew his whereabouts, and one of his colleagues
excused him, saying he was “overseas, at
a meeting”.
On Monday, the Court had ordered all the guardia
civil to testify together, and the Prosecutor
requested the hearings to be adjourned until the
missing witness turned up. “I don’t
know if it will be this afternoon, tomorrow, or
Monday”. Defence lawyer Goirizelaia reminded
the Court that this could not be a motive for
adjournment and highlighted the fact that when
there WAS indeed a reason, such as illness of
defendants, the trial had not been adjourned.
Therefore, she asked the “expert witness”
and his reports to be definitively excluded from
the Case and for the Trial to continue. After
a recess of over and hour and several phone calls,
the commander, who had gone “overseas”
turned up at the courtroom.
Finally, several Guardia Civil officers continued
testifying; they have based their statements on
documents allegedly seized from the armed organisation
ETA (the most recent of which is 13 years old)
and from other organisations and on arguments
as technical as “everyone in the Basque
Country knows this, even if they are not activists
in the Basque Movement”. This is the reasoning
they have used to support their idea that many
organisations in the Basque Country (the squatter
movement, Basque schools, campaign groups against
the toll on motorway A-8 and other similar movements)
belong to the Basque National Liberation Movement
and therefore, are dependent on ETA. The Guardia
Civil officers expressed opinions and carried
out biased interpretation of documents, all in
their capacity as “expert witnesses”.
On several occasions, reactions of incredulity
by the defendants were seen and the Chair of the
Tribunal even said “the Trial is amusing,
isn’t it?”
One of the guardia
civil explained the way in which they identify
people who are mentioned under pseudonym in seized
documents: “if in a letter it says that
“Elama” is the delegate for KHK in
Europe, and the Herri Batasuna magazine Herria
Eginez says Miguel Angel Egibar (Mikel Egibar)
is a delegate in Europe, it is not difficult to
conclude that “Elama” is Egibar and
that he is the ETA delegate in Europe”.
> up
11/09/06
Sessions 95 and 96
The Court accepts police officers as expert witnesses,
contradicting an earlier decision by this very
same court
Last year,
the Court same now trying Case 18/98, with Angela
Murillo as the chair decided that police officers
appearing in court to ratify their reports could
not appear in an expert witness capacity. They
were not even allowed to appear as direct witnesses,
only as reference witnesses. In the trial of several
people charged with membership of Al Quaeda, the
magistrates rejected police officers appearing
as expert witnesses, which was how the prosecution
had called them. This standard was backed by the
Supreme Court in September 2005.
Lawyers Kepa Landa and Iñigo Iruin reminded
the chair of the Tribunal of this fact and also
mentioned two verdicts from this year, one by
the Supreme Court and another by the Audiencia
Nacional, which ratified the thesis that neither
police officers’ testimonies nor their reports
can be considered expert witness evidence in a
trial. They insisted on the fact that current
jurisprudence rejects the idea that police officers
testifying because they wrote “intelligence”
reports can be considered expert witnesses and
that these documents can be considered expert
reports. They insisted that the Court had to establish
its position on this issue before the expert witness
phase of the trial began, because otherwise it
would be “tainted from the beginning”.
After a half-hour recess, Murillo informed the
parties that, contrarily to what she had argued
previously, the guardia civil called yesterday
would appear in an expert witness capacity, as
“experts on issues of terrorism”.
The statements of the officers began in the afternoon;
they all testified together, sitting on chairs
in the centre of the courtroom and separated from
the public by an enormous folding screen.
Instead of talking about specific parts on the
Case, however, the guardia civil began giving
their impressions about what ETA is, what the
left-wing independence movement is or the role
various organisations play in the Basque Country,
all based on the thesis of “everything is
ETA” and mentioning organisations that are
not even mentioned in the Case. The Chair of the
Tribunal herself had to interrupt them saying
“what is on trial here is not the left-wing
independence movement, but a series of people
allegedly linked to ETA”
During today’s session Mateo Zuppi, a priest
in Rome and a member of the Community of San Egidio,
and Alex Maskey, a republican MLA and former Mayor
of Belfast. In a statement made upon leaving the
Audiencia Nacional, Maskey hoped his testimony
will help to prove that “these Basque activists,
many of whom I know, have always carried out political
work for the right to self determination, to achieve
it in a peaceful and democratic way”. He
added that a trial he described as “political
(…) should not continue” and stated
it was necessary for these people to continue
“freely with their business in order to
achieve their honourable and legitimate objectives”
>
up
05/09/06
Session 94
Hearings adjourned until Monday, when the last
witnesses will testify and the expert witness
phase will begin
During
the session today, three witnesses for the defence
testified. First up was journalist and editor
in chief of the daily Gara, Maite Ubiria, who
was a member of Xaki. She categorically denied
this association was created under instructions
from ETA, saying that its main role was to divulge
the situation of the Basque Country overseas.
In her answers to the questions from defence lawyer
Jone Goirizelaia, the journalist reminded the
court that both Xaki’s and its members’
activities were “public and common knowledge”,
they used to give press conferences and even published
a bulletin. Xaki was also included in the register
for associations of the Basque regional Government.
Ubiria was arrested by the Guardia Civil in 1999
due to her links with Xaki and, she stated, the
days she was held under incommunicado detention
were “the most difficult in y life”,
as she explained the physical and psychological
pressure she was subjected to by the interrogators
from this Spanish military institution. As she
told the Court, she is still unable to recount
everything that took place during those days.
“When a Truth Commission is instated in
my country I will tell everything I went through”
said the journalist.
After Ubiria,
former Basque Prisoner Jokin Etxebarria and Aureli
Argemi, the chair of the CIEMEN, were called to
the witness box. During the thirty years the latter
has worked in the field of minority rights, he
often met several of the defendants, whose work
he praised.
The trial
has been adjourned until next Monday, September
11, when the last witnesses will testify and the
expert witnesses will begin to appear before the
court.
>
up
04/09/06
Session 93
Witnesses from various spheres of work in other
countries explain the defendants’ work
The oral
hearings for Case 18/98 resumed and the witnesses
for the defence continued to be called to testify.
The first witness up was Peio Eskisabel, in jail
in France, whose statement was heard via videoconference.
His statement, which was taken in two parts due
to the poor quality of the connection, was constantly
interrupted by the Chair of the Tribunal. Eskisabel
considered the trial’s taking place “unacceptable”
and spoke of the current political moment in the
Basque Country. Regarding the people on trial,
he stated he only knows them “through the
press, because of their public work” denying
he had ever met with them.
Like other
witnesses before him, he denied ETA has ever used
other organisations, insisting on the independent
structure of the armed organisation.
During
the session today, several witnesses from various
countries took the stand and they explained how
they met and got to know several of the defendants
in the course of their work.
Press
conference at the CUAN main office
Several
of the defendants in Case 18/98, together with
lawyer Jone Goirizelaia, the member of the Batasuna
National Executive Karmelo Landa and several witnesses
from a number of European countries (including
German lawyer Petra Isabel Schlagenhauf, director
of the political party Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie
(N-VA) Piet de Zaeger, Italian senator Mauro Bulgarelli,
Portuguese journalist Nuno Ramos de Almeida, and
Universidad Complutense Philosophy Professor Montserrat
Galcerán) gave a press conference at the
main office of the Club of Friends of the UNESCO,
where they decried this trial, which they see
as a political trial. They also highlighted the
paradox of publicly backing a peace process whilst
allowing the macro-trials to continue.
>
up
18/07/06
Session 92
Oral hearings adjourned until September 4
Defendants
in Macro-Case 18/98 believe that since the oral
hearings began on November 21, “this trial
has become a sentence in itself, even before a
conviction, being made to travel here all these
months, with all this entails in personal, family
and economic terms”, the accidents suffered
during the journeys from the Basque Country to
Madrid, the illnesses or the death of Jokin Gorostidi.
Once inside
the Courtroom, nine witnesses appeared before
the Tribunal. One of them, Basque prisoner Bixente
Goikoetxea was unable to testify because the Chair
of the Tribunal finished the videoconference before
the prisoner could give his explanations.
Another
witness was Luigi Vinci, a member of the National
Executive of Refundazione Comunista, one of the
parties taking part in the government of Italy
and who, as well as being a senator in Italy,
was also an MEP for two terms. It was at the European
Parliament where he established a political relationship
with Elena Beloki, who worked as Basque MEP Koldo
Gorostiaga’s assistant.
The EA
Secretary for Organisation, Rafa Larreina, also
appeared as a witness. He described the relations
his party and himself have held with Batasuna
representatives and, particularly, with some of
the defendants. Larreina made a positive assessment
of his experience with these people who, as he
said, have always acted in the name of EH and
Batasuna, never as ETA.
The account
of the torture suffered during their arrest by
several of the defendants in this case resounded
in the courtroom again; this time in the words
of Basque prisoners Lourdes Txurruka and Oroitz
Salegi.
Txurruka
met Nekane Txapartegi in Soto del real prison,
when she was moved to the wing after being held
in isolation for ten days after her time in police
custody. “The person who came into the cell
was not a person, it was a ghost”. Txurruka
explained that Txapartegi’s condition was
so bad when she arrived in the wing that the guards
asked her if she would share a cell with her because
“she could not be kept on her own”.
Txurruka said that this is extremely unusual as
Basque prisoners are held alone in cells and separated
from each other. “She could only lie in
bed, she had a whole load of bruises and we could
not touch her head because of the pain”.
She also testified that when Txapartegi told her
that she had been raped, “she shook all
over”. Txurruka also stated Txapartegi was
subjected to medical treatment and that she massaged
her with anti-swelling cream.
Salegi
saw Mikel Egibar for the first time in a white
boiler-suit, coming into the wing in Soto del
Real prison. Egibar told him that he was wearing
the boiler suit because they had kept his clothes,
which were covered in blood: “he was in
shock, kind of gone, and had markings on his face
and all over his body”.
Doris Benegas,
a lawyer and a long-time activist with Izquierda
Castellana, explained the relations she and her
political party held with HB, EH and now with
Batasuna. As to the defendants, she said that
“they are well regarded in society; they
are hones and have a good reputation”.
Koldo Gorostiaga
was an MEP for EH between 1999 and 2004, with
300,000 votes. In his statement he explained the
work he carried out during this time, and the
work carried out by Elena Beloki, Mikel Korta
and Miriam Campos, who were part of his team of
assistants.
Navarrese
priest José María Alemán
also testified. He confirmed the Joserra Antxia’s
thesis about the help they offered Basque deportees.
>
up
17/07/06
Sessions 90 and 91
HB, EH and Batasuna international work in the
international arena explained
During
today’s session several witnesses testified,
explaining their work in the international relations
department of the political parties HB, EH and
Batasuna. Thus, witnesses such as Alex Ugalde,
Jasone Manterola, Esther Agirre, Joseba Alvarez
and Karmelo Landa travelled to the Casa de Campo.
They all emphatically rejected the prosecution’s
thesis, which holds that ETA is in charge of designing
international activity.
“It
is an absolute nonsense to say that ETA or any
other group could direct our work”, insisted
National Executive member and former MEP Karmelo
Landa. He also explained that it was him, during
his term as MEP between 1990 and 1994, who proposed
the creation of the Herri Enbaxada (People’s
Embassy) in Brussels so that he and his team could
carry out their parliamentary work.
Both Landa
and the rest of the witnesses explained the work
several of the defendants carried out, among them
Elena Beloki, Mikel Korta, Miriam Campos and Mikel
Egibar, in international relations, the creation
of a Friendship in the European Parliament and
various lines of work attempting to give information
about the political situation in the Basque Country
and promote and “bring together efforts
in favour of a democratic resolution to the political
conflict in the Basque Country”. They also
highlighted the fact that these people were chose
for this work due to their exceptional qualifications.
Esther
Agirre told the court that the aim for which Xaki
was created was to “make the reality of
the Basque Country known, from a historical, political
language and cultural point of view”. She
denied having any links to ETA and denounced the
media campaign against her in 1998.
Patxi Hernandez,
who spent years in deportation in Algeria, denied
anyone tried to control him or any other deportees.
He denied anyone from HB or any other organisation
travelled there to give them orders. He also pointed
out that he broke deportation, together with other
comrades; of their own will “because we
saw it was pointless to carry on like that”.
The Court
made another mistake regarding summons to witnesses,
saying about one of them, Mikel Albisu Iriarte,
that “we have no information as to his whereabouts”
although the defence has to state that they had
requested his appearance, informing the Court
that he is held in Perpinya prison. The Court
had to acknowledge they had not carried out the
necessary procedures to arrange his appearance
in court via videoconference.
As
they had announced, 25 of the defendants have
begun a fast in order to denounce the trial and
to issue a series of demands to the Tribunal and
the Spanish government.
>
up
12/07/06
Session 89
The prosecutor’s thesis on the creation
of Ekin is denied
During
today’s session the witnesses corresponding
to the Xaki piece began testifying. The three
witnesses to testify today were José Luis
Alvarez Enparantza, Txillardegi (a member of Euskaltzaindia,
the Royal Academy of the Basque Language), Esquerra
Republicana de Catalunya MP Carme Porta and the
journalist at Avui Pere Martí. They spoke
about Miriam Campos, one of the defendants in
the Xaki piece and stated that in their contacts
with her she always presented herself as a representative
of the international relations commission of the
party EH and never as a representative of ETA
or Xaki.
As José
Luis Alvarez Enparantza, Txillardegi, explained
today, Ekin was created in 1952 and not as the
prosecutor maintains, in 1969. He also denied
it was a successor of the group Anai Artea. Txillardegi
explained that Ekin was created in 1952 and that
six years later, in 1958, it changed its name
and became ETA. Thus, Txillardegi has rejected
the prosecutor’s thesis. The public prosecution
contends that Ekin was created in 1969 to help
“ETA exiles”.
Due to
personal, professional or health reasons, there
were several witnesses who were unable to appear
in court yesterday. One of these was Basque prisoner
Oroitz Salegi who is in Mansilla prison, in the
province of Leon, as the lawyers informed the
Court.
They explained
how there needed to be a request by the court
for this prisoner to be brought to the Casa de
Campo, but this had not been done. Still, both
in the minutes prior to the session and during
the oral hearing, the Court Secretary said that
Salegi “has been called”, “he
has been summoned from his home in Leon”,
he insisted. “How can he have been summoned
from his home if he is in prison?” replied
defence lawyer Jone Goirizelaia.
>
up
11/07/06
Sessions 87 and 88
The Joxemi Zumalabe Foundation and its work took
up most of the content of the session again.
Xabier
Mikel Errekondo is well-known in the Basque Country
due to his long and successful career in handball.
Bidasoa, Teka, Ciudad Real, Portland San Antonio
and Ademar de León are the clubs he has
been at during fifteen years and with which he
has won European Cups, Spanish Leagues, European
Champions Leagues and every championship a professional
handball placer could wish for.
As a witness for the defence, Errekondo spoke
of the Basque national teams, the demand existing
on this issue in the Basque Country and the work
carried out in this field by ESAIT. He spoke of
this because the Guardia Civil says, as does the
prosecution, that this opinion group, created
to promote official status for Basque national
sports teams, is “an instrument of ETA”
that follows the guidelines of the armed organisation.
After rejecting this argument, the witness reminded
the Court that ESAIT is a legal and recognised
social organisation, which carries out its activity
in a public way and he highlighted the fact that
the demand for official status has received the
support of almost all Basque political parties,
of 360 organisations and of 11,000 professional
sportspeople. He also stated that ESAIT’s
activities have nothing to do with the Joxemi
Zumalabe Foundation.
As in previous days, all the witnesses who appeared
yesterday did so regarding the said Foundation
and the members of its Board and workers who are
being tried.
UPV (University of the Basque Country) Rector,
Juan Ignacio Pérez, professors such as
Ramón Zallo, Iñaki Lasagabaster
and José Allende, and Universidad de Castilla-La
Mancha lecturer Pedro Oliver, among others, also
testified.
The General Director of the savings bank Kutxa,
Xabier Alkorta, appeared as a witness due to his
links to Eusko Ikaskuntza (Society for Basque
Studies) and, specifically, to the celebration
of its XV Congress in 2001. Alkorta explained
that the Joxemi Zumalabe Foundation was chosen
to coordinate one of the areas of debate at that
Congress because it worked on and with social
movements and he gave a very positive assessment
of the work the Foundation carried out.
>
up
10/07/06
Sessions 85 and 86
A further fourteen witnesses testified regarding
the Joxemi Zumalabe Foundation
Several described,
first hand, the work of the workers at this foundation
in various social activities and events held in
recent years, such as the Social Forum of the
Basque Country, which congregated tens of organisations
and one thousand people in Gasteiz. “Without
the participation of the Joxemi Zumalabe Foundation
it would have been very difficult to hold the
Social Forum of the Basque Country”, stated
trade unionist Paul Nicholson, a member of the
National Executive of the farming union EHNE and
a European coordinator of Via Campesina, which
brings together over 200 groups and 200 million
members around the world.
Nicholson, like the member of the ELA Executive
Committee Mikel Noval, and the former Social Policy
Minister at the regional Basque Government Angel
Elias, highlighted how the workers of the Foundation
dealt with “technical” work, in any
case and did not propose issues for debate or
give guidelines or instructions, which is what
the prosecution is accusing them of.
Joint Secretary General of ELA, German Kortabarria,
also spoke of the Joxemi Zumalabe Foundation,
explaining that members of the leadership of his
trade union, the ones dealing with social issues,
had had relations with the Foundation.
Among the actions the Prosecution is accusing
ETA of in this case, is having created the movement
of conscience objection and non-submission to
the military service and the Spanish Army. Antonio
Escalante and Rafael Ajangiz rejected this idea.
Escalante, who has worked with the conscience
objection movement in Madrid, Asturias and the
Basque Country for years, explained that the movement
was born in the 70s and he insisted that it was
mostly people linked to Christian grassroots movements
and others linked to libertarianism who brought
it into being; he explained that at one of the
conferences at which he took part, he had coincided
with the Spanish Defence Minister, José
Antonio Alonso, who defended, as he does, conscientious
objection, non-submission and civil disobedience.
>
up
05/07/06
Session 84
Witnesses continue to deny the prosecutor’s
theses
During
today’s session a further seven witnesses
testified. Among these, Iñaki Ruiz de Pinedo,
a sociologist like accused Mikel Zuluaga, and
a member of the Santi Brouard Collective, who
explained that himself and other members of the
Collective had made various contributions to the
document called Piztu. “The document is
by no means the work of ETA; it is not a demand
or anything like that”.
Joseba Goñi, a former priest and coordinator
of Herria 2000 Eliza (People Church 2000) who
said that their magazine had also proposed the
idea of civil disobedience.
Patxi Azparren, a member of social movements told
the Court that the various organisations knew
that the Joxemi Zumalabe Foundation did not take
part in campaigns and the like and that they always
said so.
The former Mayor of Donostia and former Culture
Minister of the regional Basque Executive, Ramon
Labayen, also testified regarding the Basque National
Identity Document (EHNA). The prosecution contends
that ETA, through the Joxemi Zumalabe Foundation,
was behind this project. Labayen stated that as
far back as the time of the 2nd Republic his father
also promoted a similar project for a Basque ID
card; “it makes me angry to see an initiative
is attributed to ETA when I know for sure this
is not true”.
>
up
04/07/06
Sessions 82 and 83
Well known people from the field of social movements
continue to refute the charges against the Joxemi
Zumalabe Foundation
The prosecution
is stating that the Basque grassroots movement
was controlled by ASK, which was an organisation
part of KAS, until 1996, when it was substituted
by the Joxemi Zumalabe Foundation, which also
used the name of Herria Mugi. Therefore, the Grassroots
Movement Meetings organised by Herria Mugi, would
have really been organised by ETA. During the
two sessions today seventeen witnesses from very
varied grassroots movements who took part in the
said Meetings, rejected this line of argument.
On the one hand, they highlighted the good welcome
these Meetings had, as it was seen necessary to
get together and exchange experiences between
the various social movements; on the other hand,
they also insisted that there was no clear conclusion
drawn from the Meetings, except for the will to
hold them again, because there were so many and
so diverse people there, it was impossible to
set out any joint conclusions.
During cross examination there was much time devoted
to the Piztu document on civil disobedience. According
to the Prosecution, this document was written
by ETA. Several of the witnesses today, however,
stated that Mikel Zuluaga had told them he was
writing the document and asked diverse people
for help and contributions, including many of
those who testified today, who said they took
part in drafting the document. The witnesses also
explained that Piztu was a “proposal for
thought” and that together with this document,
others were put forward, and Piztu did not gain
any more attention than the rest; indeed, they
explained, most of the discussion took place in
other areas and issues.
Iñaki Goyoaga, Zuluaga’s lawyer’s
declaration was especially powerful. As he explained,
Zuluaga called him when he read in the press that
the police was attributing authorship of Piztu
to ETA, to tell him that he himself had written
it, with contributions from various people. Upon
hearing this, Goyoaga travelled to the Audiencia
Nacional to explain this and to inform the judge
that his client was at the disposal of the Court
in case they wished to call him to testify. Zuluaga
received no summons and a few days later he was
arrested by the Policía Nacional under
orders from Baltasar Garzón.
>
up
03/07/06
Sessions 80 and 81
Workers and former workers of Joxemi Zumalabe
continue to insist on the diverse nature of the
Foundation and deny the charges
During
today’s session, relatives of Fernando Olalde
(his mother and his brother) explained how the
Foundation was set up with the money from the
inheritance he received when his father died and
due to the interest he had always had in helping
grassroots and community groups. With this money,
the Joxemi Zumalabe Foundation was creating, with
the intention of being a body which would aid
communication among the social movements and of
being a place where the various organisations
could use meeting rooms etc. all this was corroborated
by the fourteen witnesses who testified today
and according to the words from several of them,
“it is enough to have attended a meeting
of the Board to know that the charges are a nonsense”.
As they said, the discussions at the Foundation
were never-ending, because they all thought very
differently and it was very complicated to reach
consensus.
This is what witnesses Javier Fuertes, Libe Yurrebaso
and Susana Martínez stated. These former
or current workers at the Foundation had to attend
meetings and take down minutes, but they could
not vote.
Other witnesses also appeared in court: university
lecturers, lawyers, accountants, sociologists,
etc. who had welcomed the news of the creation
of the Foundation as a very positive and useful
thing for mutual knowledge between the numerous
and diverse social movements existing in the Basque
Country. Among these was the economic lawyer Fernando
Valderrama, who shall appear again as an expert
witness, the lawyer and former member of the Board,
Socorro Soto and the lecturer and doctor in sociology
César Martínez.
They stated that nobody who tried to impose certain
criteria or one way of going ahead would have
been accepted in the Foundation. The same work
continues since 1996 as the workers of the Foundation
and the members of the Board have confirmed. Questions
to the witnesses were asked by lawyers José
María Elosua and Carlos Trenor, the latter
also a defendant in the case against the Joxemi
Zumalabe Foundation, as he was the President.
The last witness to appear today was José
León Otaño Ugartemendia, the current
coordinator for teaching the Basque language and
Basque literacy to adults AEK. Although the Audiencia
Nacional declared itself out of jurisdiction in
the proceedings against AEK, it has not returned
the 12 boxes of material it seized years ago.
In addition, although in the beginning investigation
judge Baltasar Garzón accused AEK of being
the “finance strong-box” for ETA and
prosecuted 15 members for this crime, the Audiencia
Nacional decided to drop the case, which was later
shelved. However, the prosecutor still mentions
AEK in his prosecution submission.
>
up
28/06/06
Session Nº79
Leaders of the political parties EA, PNV and Batasuna
request a definitive suspension of the trial during
their appearance as witnesses
Pernando
Barrena, of the National Board of Batasuna, insisted
that decisions in the organisations of the Basque
pro-independence movement are taken by the activists
and that this is a known fact. He stated that
Batasuna is an independent organisation that makes
its own decisions and he denied that ETA imposes
any guidelines.
Joseba
Egibar, a leader of the PNV, explained how during
the contacts the PNV has held with the armed organisation,
the latter “never spoke about Batasuna or
any other organisations”. He stated that
the PNV “has always been very clear”
that “when you have to talk to ETA, you
go directly to talk to ETA”. “The
party has always had an open relationship with
all Basque political parties, but when we needed
to talk to ETA, we went to ETA”. The chair
of the Tribunal, Angela Murillo, asked Joseba
Egibar several direct questions.
Begoña Errazti, the President of EA, explained
that her party has met representatives of Ekin,
KAS and Segi on various occasions, but she argued
that EA has “never received instructions
or guidelines from these social movements”.
The prosecutor asked this witness her opinion
about the trial, saying that “if she were
against it, her credibility as a witness could
>
up
27/06/06
Sessions Nº 77 and 78
Basque prisoner Josetxo Arizkuren testifies via
videoconference
“I am a member of ETA, and I don’t
know what I’m doing in this trial”
protested the prisoner, who explained that “neither
myself nor the organisation I belong to have any
links to these people or these organisations”.
“What I know about these people is through
the press and because of the important work they
have carried out in the cultural, social and political
sphere”, he stated. “The only thing
my organisation and this spread of political and
social organisations, associations and groups
have in common is that we share the demand –together
with the majority of Basque society- for our right
to freely decide our future”
Arizkuren’s
testimony had several tense moments, because the
Chair of the Tribunal, Angela Murillo, attempted
to interrupt him again and again; when the Basque
political prisoner announced he would not answer
questions by the prosecutor, she threatened to
charge him for it.
Arritxu
Santamaria, the coordinator of the Basic Democratic
Agreement, subscribed by 55 Basque organisations,
explained the content of this agreement and following
a direct question by the Tribunal, she explained
that ETA did not take part, but once the agreement
had been made public, the organisation expressed
its backing for the model for conflict resolution
the agreement proposes.
Joxe Iriarte,
Bikila, a member of the political party Zutik
also appeared as a witness, like the famous surfer
Iker Acero, the internationalist Walter Wendelin,
and the former HB and EH councillors in Donostia,
Iñigo Balda, Juan Carlos Alduntzin and
Mikel Garaiondo. They all denied ETA ever tried
to impose any political opinions or guidelines
and that when they had contacts with members of
Ekin, these were completely public.
>
up
26/06/06
Sessions Nº 75 and 76
Basque prisoners deny there is “double activism”
in ETA
Five Basque
political prisoners appeared as witnesses today:
Joseba Enbeita, Juan Lorenzo Lasa Mitxelena, Julen
Atxurra, Urko Manzisidor and Koldo Martín
Karmona, members of EPPK (Basque Political Prisoners’
Collective) and they highlighted the sovereign
nature of this Collective, rejecting the idea
that “there is a collective of ETA prisoners
whose actions depend on the leadership of ETA
militar” as the prosecution says.
Lasa Mitxelena knows
the armed organisation first had, as he has been
involved in ETA since he was 16 and, from this
experience, he denied ETA “delegated”
part of its activity in organisations such
as KAS or Ekin. “ETA has never left its
political activity to other organisations”
he stated.
He also denied members of ETA had a “double
activism” in order to direct or impose guidelines
in other organisations and he reminded the Court
that this was precisely the reason for the split
into ETApm and ETAm in the 70s. ETA militar “recognised
the level of political and organisational maturity
of Basque society and had no need to direct other
organisations”.
The Franciscan monk
Paulo Agirrezabaltzategi and Xabier Olano also
testified.
>
up
21/06/06
Session Nº 74
Witness denies the organisation Euskal Herrian
Euskaraz received orders from Ekin
Gabi Basañez, who was a member of Euskal
Herrian Euskaraz, an organisation that works to
defend the Basque language and language rights,
explained the work of this organisation and denied
Ekin ever exerted any power over it. Whilst it
is true that they had contacts with Ekin, they
were limited to meetings regarding the organisation
of campaigns for the Basque language and other
similar actions.
Before the session began, the Spanish police searched
all the defendants’ bags and ordered defence
lawyers to open their car boots.
>
up
20/06/06
Sessions 72 and 73
Witnesses continue to argue that the Prosecutor’s
thesis only seeks to criminalise political activism
During
the morning session, Juan Maria Olano, who began
work with the Gestoras Pro Amnistia twenty years
ago, took the stand. He explained that Gestoras
was created in 1977, “after Franco’s
death, many people saw that the transition did
not guarantee the rights of the Basque Country
and that the conflicts existing up until then
would continue and there would continue to be
political prisoners”. With that idea in
mind and after a massive assembly, the Gestoras
Pro Amnistia were created; he categorically denied
they were created by ETA “that is something
the police made up in order to criminalise Gestoras”
he stated. “Political prisoners suffer special
conditions, precisely because they are political
prisoners, and that is why they are under a penitentiary
policy that was specifically designed for them,
with a clear political aim. You know this better
than I do, because you are more experienced in
this than I am” he told the Tribunal.
Next to testify were Maitane Intxaurraga, a member
of the feminist organisation Egizan between 1991
and 1995, and Jose Luis Rezabal, a member of the
LAB trade union since 1992. They both denied having
followed orders from KAS and highlighted the autonomous
nature of both their organisations. Igor Ortega,
who held various posts in the youth organisations
Jarrai and Haika, and Ainhoa Etxaide, who is currently
a member of the LAB leadership, both declared
in a similar vein.
In the afternoon, it was the turn of Joseba Permach,
who flatly rejected the idea that any organisation
other than his own would set its lines for action
“we are nobody’s political wing, we
are an organisation working for nation building
and social transformation, similarly to the people
sitting here today” he said, referring to
the defendants.
Mikel Etxaburu was
the last of the witnesses of the day. He was a
member of KAS until the end of 1993 and he denied
there were any links between KAS and ETA.
>
up
19/06/06
Sessions Nº 70 and 71
Defendants refuse to enter the courtroom, demanding
the trial be dropped
The problematic
development of the trial and the economic, work,
family and health costs it causes to the defendants,
as well as the criminalisation of their political
and social activity it has brought about, led
them to carry out a one-hour protest between 9.30
and 10.30. They displayed a banner demanding recognition
of civil and political rights and the series of
trials known as 18/98 and more to be stopped.
This event enraged Judge Murillo who, in a state
of nerves, demanded the presence of the defendants
in order to continue with the trial. When they
went into the courtroom she ordered them to leave
in order to call them in, one by one, and ask
them about the reasons for their attitude and
then study the possibility of taking further legal
action against them. This protest was used by
the private prosecution, carried by the Asociación
Víctimas del Terrorismo, to request the
defendants be remanded in prison, arguing there
was a “risk of them absconding”. The
defendants explained it had been a protest because
they believe “the trial is a form of punishment
in itself”.
The Tribunal shall take a decision on this. Meanwhile,
the witnesses called by the defence continued
to be cross examined. University professor Xosé
Estévez and José Orella Unzue declared
they had often written contributions for Egin,
right from its creation, and they were never censored
or influenced as to the direction of their articles.
Floren Aoiz declared he had been “a member
of the organisations being put on trial, and I
know I was never a member of ETA” adding
that “the terms of the accusation have nothing
to do with reality”. Joseba Kamio stated
that, in his experience, the Basque organisations
on trial “had no ties to anyone” and
that believing the opposite is part of a “strategy
of criminalisation”.
>
up
14/06/06
Session Nº 69
Witnesses highlight the “progressive and
open” nature of Egin
Today,
Iñaki Zabaleta took the stand. In his capacity
as professor of Journalism at the Public University
of the Basque Country and reader of the closed
newspaper Egin, explained to the courtroom –inasmuch
as the Tribunal Chair allowed him- what this newspaper
was. “It was a journalistic project which
could compete in any western democracy; it was
not and could not be an instrument of ETA”.
He described the context in which it was created,
after the dictatorship, as one of “great
change and creation” and explained how other
newspapers, such as El País or Diario 16,
were created in the same context. They were “new
newspapers that wanted to be progressive and produce
good journalism”. He called the creation
of Egin “the great Basque project”
in the field of journalism, “Egin was the
El País of the Basque Country”. Thus,
“they made a big effort to bring the best
journalists form around the Spanish State”.
He defined Egin’s editorial line as “progressive,
open, giving a voice to every section in society”,
and he remembered that even leaders of the PP
such as Carlos Iturgaiz had had many opportunities
to express themselves in the paper closed by Baltasar
Garzón. He finished his appearance insisting
that Egin “maintained a coherent continuity
in its contents through time” and rejected
the idea held by the prosecution, that ETA “parachuted
into” the newspaper in order to impose a
certain line of information.
The following
witness made a statement along the same lines.
Alberto Gartzia is the current Press Officer of
the Environment Department of the Basque regional
Government, although he has worked in various
media throughout his twenty-year professional
life. At the beginning of his career he worked
in Egin. He explained that no-one imposed instructions
to favour ETA and that all discussions inside
the paper were “strictly journalistic”.
Other witnesses
included Lourdes Uribarri, who was the head of
the trade union LAB in Gasteiz, Manuela Alonso,
who explained she had become a member of Ekin
after realising it “dealt with the issues
I was concerned about” and the former EH
councillor Karmele Arriola. They all insisted,
as other witnesses have done, on the idea that
nobody in Ekin ever attempted to impose guidelines
and that the meetings they held were with Ekin,
not with ETA and dealt with issues ranging from
education models to the importance of local, small
commerce in neighbourhoods.
>
up
13/06/06
Session Nº 68
Witnesses insist that no members of Ekin attempted
to impose their views
Ten relevant
members of various Basque social, cultural and
political organisations appeared as witnesses
for the defence. They explained their relations
with the organisation Ekin and, specifically,
their relations with various defendants. They
insisted upon the idea that Ekin was neither a
secret nor a clandestine organisation and that
its members never hid the fact that they were
part of the said organisation. They also highlighted
the fact that the defendants never tried to impose
their ideology or their criteria at the meetings
they held and one of the witnesses even said that
the idea that Ekin and ETA were the same thing
was “cobblers”. During today’s
session, the Court was given an explanation of
the organisational and associational reality of
the Basque Country: Enrique Miranda, one of the
witnesses, said that Undiano, the village of which
he is the Mayor, has 140 inhabitants and two associations,
“this is the rule in all the villages in
the Basque Country, where there is always at least
one association”.
>
up
12/06/06
Session Nº 67
Witnesses continue to highlight the great work
Ekin carried out in various fields
Today,
the witnesses, known members of various Basque
social organisations, explained their relation
with Ekin. Their declarations gradually dismantled
the Public Prosecutor’s thesis.
Ana Eizagirre, Xabier Mendiguren, Iñigo
Urrutia, José Ramón Kortabarria,
Nikolas Ibarra and Josu Telleria, among others,
coincided in their statement that they had never
received any orders from Ekin. They also insisted,
yet again, that Ekin’s activity was public
and that its work was mainly focused on the fields
of the Basque language, culture and socio-economics.
All the witnesses
reminded the Court that the launch of Ekin was
held in Iruñea, in front of thousands of
people and that it was covered in the front pages
of all the main newspapers, despite which the
Public Prosecutor insists on presenting Ekin as
an obscure and clandestine organisation.
>
up
07/06/06
Session Nº66
Egin Piece: Garzón closed Egin down after
the company had reached an agreement with the
Social Security Treasury
Although
the State Prosecutor has charged the representatives
of the company that published Egin of “tax
fraud” (for which he is requesting up to
51 years prison) today the province director of
the General Treasury of the Social Security in
Gipuzkoa, Juan Ignacio Trecet, appeared in court
as a witness and stated that “I always encountered
a positive attitude and a will to reach an agreement
with the Social Security”
Trecet
confirmed the fact that The Gipuzkoa Social Security
and the publishing company for Egin had reached
agreement whereby the newspaper’s debt would
be paid within five years and that the paper had
already repaid its debt in other provinces, including
interest. The agreement included acknowledgement
of the debt, and a payment offer, in addition
to a series of guarantees (such as the machinery
and other assets). Following questions by the
defence, Trecet expressed his personal certainty
that if Egin had continued working, it would have
been able to pay back the full debt. That possibility
was blocked by Judge Garzón’s order
to close Egin down.
>
up
06/06/06
Sessions Nº 64 and 65
Egin Piece: 12 witnesses for the defence
The first
witness to testify was the famous playwright Alfonso
Sastre, who appeared via a videoconference (he
is 80 years old) and stated that “I’m
sure those who criticised Egin did not read it”.
Sastre stated that he personally felt the closure
of the paper, with which he had cooperated since
the beginning, “as a great disaster”
and he highlighted the diversity of ideas that
could be found in its pages.
During the afternoon session three former Egin
editors: first up was Mariano Ferrer, the first
editor the paper had: “there was a need
for a medium that saw the Basque Country as a
national reality, (…) the voice of many
and the mouthpiece of no-one”. “We
wanted to become the heirs of the efforts carried
out against the dictatorship”. Regarding
the issue of whether ETA or KAS had anything to
do with the creation of the newspaper, Ferrer
said “that idea is a joke”.
Next up
was José Felix Azurmendi (editor of the
newspaper between 1980 and 1987). Azurmendi described
the project as “very exciting” and
rejected the idea that anyone would impose an
editorial line: “I would not have allowed
that”, he stated.
Then, Xabier
Oleaga, editor between 1990 and 1992 insisted,
like Ferrer and Azurmendi before him, that the
foundational objective of Egin was to be “the
voice of those with no voice”.
As well as the former
Egin editors, other witnesses testified: Txaro
Arteaga, who was the director of the Basque Women’s
Institute (Emakunde) for sixteen years highlighted
the fact that the newspaper had received the Emakunde
Award three times (1990, 1991 and 1995) due to
its role in the struggle for gender equality and
its coverage of the situation of women: “Egin
was a left-wing newspaper that bore in mind groupings
that found no space in other media”.
After this, several trade-unionists testified:
Txutxi Ariznabarreta, head of the LAB communication
department; Jesús Uzkudun, CCOO secretary
for Health at Work and Environment and Juan Antonio
Korta, ELA press officer. They all underlined
the grassroots orientation and diversity of Egin
and stated the analysis and comment in the newspaper
was “serious and good quality”. They
also said Egin had pioneered coverage of many
issues, such as health at work, work accidents,
the environment and labour conflicts.
>
up
05/06/06
Sessions Nº 62 and 63
Egin Piece: The Tribunal rejects the challenge
brought by the defence team for “manifest
partiality” and refuses to void the inclusion
of photocopies as evidence against the defendants
The defence
submitted a challenge and an objection against
the three judges in the Tribunal for its proven
and “objective partiality”, as a set
of photocopies provided by the Prosecution was
accepted as a substitute for the originals. The
photocopies were of Egin accounts and labour documents,
which are vital for the prosecution.
After a
recess that lasted almost an hour, the three judges
rejected to process the challenge against them
(via a short decision, despite the fact that the
submission by the defence totalled 33 pages) with
hardly any reasoning to back up their decision.
The defence then expressed a formal objection
and announced they would submit a request for
the trial to be voided. The tribunal, again, rejected
to allow this request onto the processing stage.
Lawyer
Zigor Reizabal listed up to six reasons which
preclude the incorporation of these photocopies,
without which the State Prosecutor would have
to drop a large part of the charges. According
to the lawyer, this is “a violation of the
right to a defence and to a fair trial and proves
that there is a pre-formed opinion on the part
of the Tribunal” he denounced that “essential
rules of procedure have been breached and fraudulent
use of article 729.3 the Criminal Procedure Law
(Ley de Enjuiciamiento Criminal) had been made,
in order to incorporate these pieces of evidence.
During
the session, several witnesses for the defence
testified and they all highlighted the “open
and democratic” nature of the newspaper
Egin, closed by Judge Baltasar Garzón.
The statements came from prestigious writers and
artists, such as Javier Sábada, Amaia Zubiria,
Iñaki Berazategi or Mikel Aramendi; who
cooperated with the paper, or Jonan Fernández
who was head of Elkarri (a peace group) for 13
years, who said that “Egin was permeable
to all kinds of social initiatives; it far more
receptive than other media, both in quantitative
and qualitative terms”. Marian Beitialarrangoitia
(former Director of Egin radio and currently director
of a programme at another station) and Iñaki
Usarralde (also a former worker at Egin radio)
also took the stand and explained the tough economic
situation the workers of the closed media had
to go through; thy also rejected the idea that
anyone imposed the programme schedule at the radio
station.
>
up
29/05/06
Session Nº61
The documentary evidence nobody has seen irregularly
incorporated
Once again,
lawyers and defendants left the 18/98 Case courtroom
in a state of amazement. Indeed, almost 200 documents
that have become a source of controversy in recent
days (which have not been found) have finally
been incorporated into the Case, although the
State Prosecutor himself, Enrique Molina, had
acknowledged that this option was not really viable
in legal terms.
Finally, after a recess, the Tribunal decided
to incorporate the documents “due to the
interest of the parties” which caused the
defence to express its disagreement and denounce
“the clear partiality in its [the Tribunal’s]
decisions. The defence lawyers complained about
what, in their opinion, was “a clear and
fully-fledged miscarriage of justice” because
the judges ignore the content of the documents
they have incorporated into the Case. The logical
procedure would be for the court to analyse the
documents to decide whether incorporating them
is pertinent; however, this cannot be done as
the documents are nowhere to be found.
The defence denounced a “miscarriage of
justice” and will assess the possibility
of taking legal action against the judges in charge
of this trial.
The session was adjourned until next Monday, June
5.
>
up
24/05/06
Session Nº60
Lawyers request the protection of the Basque Council
of Lawyers again
The almost
200 essential documents upon which a large part
of the prosecutor’s arguments are based
have still not been found and lawyer Iruin insisted
that the Trial cannot continue without the documents
and that “we don’t even know if they
really exist”. The lawyers for the defence
have requested the protection of the Basque Council
of Lawyers in view of the violation of the fundamental
rights, of procedural guarantees, of the right
to a defence and of the impossibility to carry
out their work in decent conditions. The defence
has also asked the Tribunal to wait until the
aforementioned body has given its opinion, but
the Chair of the Tribunal decided to continue
with the trial.
Defence lawyer Iñigo Iruin submitted the
objection he was unable to submit the previous
day due to the hurried manner in which the Tribunal
closed the session, and criticised the judges
in a lengthy submission. He pointed out that the
Court is assuming the existence of a series of
documents although they have no data to support
this assumption. He highlighted the fact that
the situation is significantly different depending
on whether the documents exist or not and that
until their existence is confirmed or otherwise,
the hearings cannot continue. The defence lawyers
have never had the said documents in their possession,
there is no evidence to prove their existence
and Investigation Court Nº 5 itself acknowledged
a year and a half ago that “there are no
pieces or evidence or documents from this Case
18/98”.
Iruin announced that the Basque Council of Lawyers
was in the middle of a meeting, precisely because
of these developments, and that it had requested
a meeting with the defence lawyers.
Finally, following a recess, the Trial has been
adjourned until next Monday.
>
up
Session Nº59
The Court Secretary does not know where the original
evidence is
The level
of astonishment increased even further in the
afternoon, when what the witness presented was
nothing but a set of photocopies of the Notary’s
minutes and of the original photographs presented
by the defence. Lawyer Iruin asked where the originals
of the evidence were, Judge Murillo replied “we
have looked for them and, I don’t know if
you understand, they are not there”.
Iruin resumed cross-examination and López
surprised all present again, by admitting that
he had not only never been to the Egin premises,
but that he had never even seen the video. In
his view, the black and white photographs were
enough.
In addition, Jose Mari Esparza (director of the
Txalaparta publishing house for years) and José
Mari Irazusta (a representative of the company
that published “Argia”) also appeared
before the Court. They both denied there were
any links between the publishing company, the
weekly magazine and ETA and they highlighted the
fact that they had never been summoned in all
these years and no measures had been taken against
the said companies. They both appeared in relation
to a news item that appeared in the Spanish daily
El Mundo in 1993, whereby their companies appeared
as “part of the network of companies financing
KAS-HB”. Neither of these companies has
ever been charged.
>
up
23/05/06
Session Nº58
The Court Appointed Administrator admits they
neglected the Egin premises and did nothing to
prevent their deterioration
During
today’s session, the Court Appointed Administrator
of the closed daily newspaper Egin, Antonio López,
admitted that no measures were taken (despite
their being requested by both the workers of the
newspaper and the Policía Nacional itself,
in charge of the closure) to prevent the large
amount of machinery from deteriorating. Therefore
“no actions were taken” since 1998,
when Egin was closed down “to prevent the
loss of value and deterioration of the conditions
of the material”. He also admitted that
the cautionary measures imposed by the Case Investigation
Judge, Baltasar Garzón, “prevented
maintenance work, as he had frozen all accounts
and assets”.
The defence showed a video recorded in the premises
in 2003, when the closure of the newspaper was
lifted, with heartbreaking images of the damage
the passage of time had caused on the machinery,
the buildings and their contents: ceilings caved
in because of the dampness, destroyed tools, flooded
corridors, broken computers and machines…
The administrator acknowledged that nothing had
been done to prevent all this from happening.
The economic and labour documentation relative
to 1998, 199 and 2000 (balance sheets and assessments,
minutes, appendixes…) cannot be found. It
totals almost 200 documents, upon which the prosecution
has based a large part of its thesis. Although
the Court Appointed Administrator stated he had
handed in all these documents, the Court Secretary
declared they had not been incorporated into the
Case Documentation; nobody could account for their
whereabouts. Lawyer Iñigo Iruin remembered
how, in 1999, the Court Appointed Administrator
had stated that these documents were “fundamental
in order to portray an image of the assets of
these companies”. However, following a recess
the Chair of the Tribunal Ángela Murillo
did not see any reason to adjourn the hearing
and said there would be a request issued to the
Audiencia Nacional Investigation Court Nº
5 (in charge of the investigation of this case).
She did not explain what would happen if the evidence
was not found.
Finally, the hearing
was adjourned so that López could go to
his office to search for the evidence.
>
up
22/05/06
Session Nº57
The witnesses for the defence begin to take the
stand and the defence team presents a formal objection
Lawyer
for the defence Zigor Reizabal, seconded by the
rest of the lawyers, formally objected to the
“procedural transgression” caused
by the fact that witnesses called by the prosecution
will declare after defence witnesses (there are
still two witnesses called by the prosecution
who have not declared: Basque prisoners Josetxo
Arizkuren, who is in jail in France and the Spanish
policeman who took Edorta Jiménez’s
statement during his arrest in 1984) which favours
the State Prosecutor’s interests. The defence
lawyers quoted Article 701 of the Ley de Enjuiciamiento
Criminal (Criminal Prosecution Law) which highlights
the obligation that the witnesses for the defence
be the last to declare. The lawyers said this
action by the Tribunal is a violation of both
the right to a defence and the right to effective
legal protection.
Despite
this, the Tribunal ratified its decision and ordered
the beginning of cross examination of the witnesses
for the defence.
The defence
has also found out more data relating to this
irregular way of proceeding: according to the
court roll, which includes all the circumstances
related to the trial, the Chair of the Tribunal,
Angela Murillo, sent the French authorities a
request for Arizkuren to declare at the trial;
adding that his appearance could not be delayed
because it must take place before the witnesses
for the defence were due to appear ion court.
The French authorities replied that the prisoner
would be unavailable to appear in court until
June 15, because the jail would not have the necessary
means to set up a video-conference. However, they
added that if the Chair believed it was necessary,
they could take other measures, such as transferring
the prisoner to another jail with the necessary
means. Angela Murillo never replied to this letter,
nor did she carry out any other actions to ensure
Arizkuren would appear before the court prior
to June 15. She did not inform the parties of
this during any of the sessions, simply saying
that the prisoner would not give his statement
until June 15. As to the Spanish policeman who
also is to appear as a witness for the prosecution,
there is no news as to when he will appear in
court.
During
this first session of witnesses for the defence,
the founders of the Gadusmar company, which marketed
cod, refuted the Prosecutor’s thesis, rejecting
the idea that the company belonged to ETA.
>
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18/05/06
Session º56
Contrary to law, witnesses for the prosecution
will be cross-examined after witnesses for the
defence have been cross-examined
During
today’s session, more witnesses called by
the prosecution appeared before the court. According
to Sabin del Bado and Txaro Buñuel, the
decision to open up an embassy in Brussels was
due to the fact that they had delegates at the
European Parliament and in order to publicise
the situation in the Basque Country, to facilitate
international relations and to seek support for
conflict resolution in the Basque Country; however,
this embassy was open to all Basque citizens and
was in no way due to any ETA decisions.
Jon Iturregi,
the head of the Central Information Unit of the
Basque Regional Police, was also cross examined.
His appearance was related to two reports this
police force sent to judge Baltasar Garzón
in 2001, with data on the defendants and on various
protests in the Basque Country. The documents
bear Iturregi’s signature although, following
questions by the defence, the Ertzaintza officer
acknowledged that despite having signed them,
he ignored their content, as he had not written
them or even read them.
Although
two witnesses for the prosecution are still to
appear in court, the Tribunal decided that the
witnesses for the defence are to begin appearing
in court during the next session and after that,
the two remaining witnesses for the prosecution
will appear; this is contrary to Spanish procedural
law. This caused an objection by the defence lawyers,
who believe this is a “breach of procedure”
and that there is no legal reason to support such
an irregular decision.
>
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17/05/06
Sessions Nº54 and Nº55
Witnesses for the prosecution continue to support
the arguments of the defence
Today more
of the witnesses called by the prosecution continued
to appear in court: Basque prisoner Carlos Almorza,
Marga Izaga, a worker from the Gara newspaper,
and Iñaki Herrán and Eugenio Etxebeste,
aka “Antton”. The latter gave a detailed
explanation of his experiences in ETA, from the
time he joined in 1972. According to his statement,
the theory of “splitting” (desdoblamiento),
which is a keystone of the prosecution’s
argument, is “absurd” and “if
anyone put that idea forward inside ETA, this
would cause a schism”. According to this
theory of the prosecution, ETA has members who
are “split”, i.e. also active in other
Basque organisations. Like Antton, former Basque
prisoner Iñaki Herrán insisted on
ETA’s “totally autonomous and independent”
nature.
It
is worth highlighting famous Basque writer Edorta
Jiménez’s account of the torture
he was subjected to during his arrest in 1984,
an experience he has been trying to overcome for
the last 22 years. Jiménez was not charged
or tried after his arrest.
>
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10/05/06
Session Nº53
The state prosecutor cross examined a witness
who had not been announced
During
the session today, several of the witnesses proposed
by the State Prosecutor gave their statements.
Members of the Policía Nacional, the Guardia
Civil and the Ertzaintza answered the questions
asked by the defence and the prosecution.
As has
become usual, today the Tribunal made a completely
irregular decision, which is contrary to law:
one of the ertzainas called to declare because
he was the author of one of the reports used by
the prosecution denied having ever written this
report. Nevertheless, the prosecution continued
to ask questions regarding the content of the
document. “It doesn’t ring a bell;
I’ve never seen it” said the police
officer, until defence lawyer Kepa Landa raised
an objection. He stated that continuing this cross-examination
would be to incorporate a witness which is alien
to the case and who had not been requested by
any of the parties. The Chair of the Tribunal,
however, ordered cross-examination to continue.
When the State Prosecutor asked the witness whether
he had never in his life seen this report”
and the reply was “no”, the prosecutor
said there would be no more questions.
The other
Basque Regional Police officer called to the witness-box,
the head of the Central Information Unit, Jon
Iturregi, did not attend the trial and gave no
explanation, so he will be called again.
After this,
the guardia civil in charge of interrogating Josu
Arkauz (the case of this Basque citizen and his
torture complaint was taken on by the CAT). Arkauz
had previously stated that the statement he had
been forced to sing in Guardia Civil custody had
been prepared by the Guardia Civil itself, which
this officer denied. At that point, defence lawyer
Aitor Ibero proceeded to read out a sentence included
in the said statement, which used a kind of language
the detainee would never have used. The guardia
civil officer, however, stuck to his statement
that the content of the declaration was the words
of the detainee.
>
up
09/0506
Sessions Nº51 and Nº50
The witnesses continue to reject the prosecution’s
thesis
The next
to take the witness box was José Luis Álvarez
Santacristina, aka “Txelis”, who was
the head of the ETA political apparatus until
his arrest in 1992. Like previous witnesses, he
comprehensively rejected the idea that ETA had
used other organisations or had delegated parts
of its activity to KAS or later to Ekin. He called
the theses at the very base of the charges brought
by the State Prosecution and the Investigation
Judge “absurd”.
He was
also asked about the “Udaletxe Project”,
another one of the key points for the prosecution,
which would involve a joint finance project for
all the organisations in the Basque Patriotic
Left. Txelis asked whether the document was written
in Spanish, to which the Prosecutor Molina replied
affirmatively. “Well, that is one reason
to say that document was not written by the Organisation”,
said the prisoner, explaining that if it were
an ETA document, it would be in Basque.
Next, Juan
Luis Agirre, Nagore Mujika and José Ramón
Dorronsoro were called to the witness box. One
by one, they refuted the arguments of the prosecution.
At the
end of yesterday’s session, to the amazement
of the defence, Angela Murillo summoned the parties
for May 17th, which is contrary to the calendar
of the Court. Lawyer José María
Elosua took the floor to object to this decision,
which they had not previously been told about,
and requested the hearings to continue today,
as planned. The State Prosecutor wanted the officers
of the Policía Nacional, the Guardia Civil
and the Ertzaintza who were the next witnesses
to declare after several Basque citizens who they
had arrested and who are summoned for the 17th.
Therefore, he wanted the members of the security
forces to be cross-examined at the very end of
his list of witnesses. The Chair had to rectify
in the end.
>
up
08/05/06
Sessions Nº49 and Nº50
Hearings continue and the defendants stage a protest:
There is a limit to our patience”
The defendants
had their comrades Jokin Gorostidi (who died recently)
and José Ramón Aranguren (who is
in a serious condition, following a heart attack)
in mind today. They denounced the lack of respect
on the part of the Court and they remembered the
cases of Iñigo Elkoro, Mikel Egibar and
David Soto, adding that these cases and those
of Aranguren y Jokin Gorostidi “are a direct
consequence of the conditions under which this
trial is taking place”
Today the witnesses called by the prosecution
began to take the floor. The first four to do
so were Josu Arkauz, Joseba Arregi and Pakito
Mujika and the former ETA member turned informant,
Juan Manuel Soares Gamboa.
The former three rejected the existence of any
links between ETA and KAS and the latter’s
statement was so contradictory that his credibility
as a witness is under serious question.
On another front, the Tribunal accepted the request
made by the State Prosecution to remove José
Ramón Aranguren from the trial (he is in
hospital, in a serious condition). Aranguren,
68 years old, has had to travel to Madrid every
week for the last 6 months following the decision
by the Tribunal to make all the defendants attend
all the hearings (instead of attending only the
hearings affecting them, as the defence had requested).
Now, he will have to be triad right from the beginning.
>
up
05/05/06
José Ramón Aranguren suffers a heart
attack
Aranguren, the vice-president
of the publishing company Orain and one of the
defendants in Case 18/98, has suffered a heart
attack and had to undergo two operations. Despite
his serious condition, he has improved over recent
hours. The other defendants issued statements
saying that since this trial began they have had
to travel 14,900 Km, travelling to Madrid and
back to the Basque Country every week, and that
in addition to the stress of travelling, they
also have to bear the stress in the courtroom.
In Aranguren’s case, one must also take
into account the fact that he has to travel to
Paris every two weekends, as his son is held in
jail there due to the policy of prisoner dispersal
used on Basques.
>
up
25/04/06
Jokin Gorostidi died
Jokin Gorostidi, was
a defendant in the Xaki (an organisation for international
solidarity) piece. Despite his frail health he
was being made to attend all the hearings. He
died of heart failure two days after having been
called to the stand. He had a heart attack on
his way home from going over his statement with
his lawyer. As his lawyer said, “Gorostidi
survived being sentenced to two death penalties
at the Burgos trial and was held for over eight
years in Franco’s jails. Perhaps such a
herd life made his heart weaker and he has been
unable to overcome the tension and the nerves
caused by Macro-Case 18/98”. The Trial will
go ahead without the historic Basque activist.
>
up
24/04/06
Session Nº48
Trial adjourned until May 8th due to the serious
condition of one of the defendants
Lawyer
Iñigo Iruin requested the trial be adjourned
until there is news on the health of Jokin Gorostidi,
who was to take the stand today and is in a deep
coma following a heart attack.
The Tribunal decided to continue with the hearing
despite the fact that Mr. Gorostidi was not present
and went on to call David Soto, another defendant
who was unable to give his statement at the planned
time due to serious illness. However, Soto could
not answer the questions because he had not been
able to watch the 70 hours of DVD recordings of
the trial that the Tribunal ought to have provided
so that he could follow the trial, but he only
received a few days before today’s hearing.
Both Soto and his lawyer, Zigor Reizabal tried
to complain about the defencelessness they were
facing and the violation of the right to a defence,
but it was impossible because the Chair of the
Tribunal, Angela Murillo, kept interrupting them.
>
up
19/04/06
Session Nº47
Xaki piece: Statements by Mikel Korta, Miriam
Campos and Nekane Txapartegi
Both Korta
and Campos denied having been members of Xaki
(although they reminded the courtroom that Xaki
was a public association, not clandestine) and
said their work was in the international relations
department of Herri Batasuna. They also denied
their work was aimed at de-legitimising the Spanish
and French states, saying that it was aimed at
spreading information about the rights violations
in the Basque Country. Korta said, “If this
kind of information was de-legitimising for the
states, that is their problem”. Among other
things, they dealt with the establishing of relations
with actors and public figures from other countries,
whether from the political sphere or the trade
union or social spheres, as well as with MPs and
governments from various political traditions.
They denied their work was underground at all,
as Campos insisted, on the contrary “we
did our best for it to have as much public echo
as possible”.
Next, Nekane
Txapartegi was called to take the stand, as Mikel
Egibar and Joxe Mari Olarra did the previous day,
she shocked the courtroom with her account of
the torture she suffered. She told the Tribunal
that her statement in custody was a consequence
of the “hell” she had been through,
which included being suffocated with the bag,
beatings, electric shocks, staged execution, constant
blows and shouts, sexual humiliation and rape
at the hands of the Guardia Civil. “They
took me to a room, they stripped me and they raped
me”. Txapartegi said she did not tell the
Audiencia Nacional forensic doctor about all this
because “the door was open and they could
hear whatever I said”. All she told him
was that her wrists hurt badly. “He prescribed
a cream and gave me money to pay for it”
she said. When she was taken before the investigation
judge Teresa Palacios she did complain about the
torture, but the judge did not take any notice.
Prior to being taken before the judge, in the
Audiencia Nacional corridors, the guardia civil
had warned her that if she did not ratify her
statement, she would be taken back to them.
Session
Nº46
Xaki Piece: Statement by lawyer José Ramón
Antxia
For six
years, Antxia worked as a lawyer for Gestoras
pro-Amnistia, providing legal assistance to deportees,
and he denied ever having been a member of Xaki.
Like Pepe Uruñuela, he did not refuse to
answer the questions posed by the public prosecutor.
> up
18/04/06
Session Nº 45
Xaki Piece: Joxe Mari Olarra and Elena Beloki
take the stand
The afternoon
session began with José Mari Olarra’s
statement, who repeatedly denied the charges against
him, for which the prosecution has requested a
fifteen-year jail sentence.
In his
statement, Olarra told the court that he has been
arrested on several occasions during his life
in politics and he has been through terrible torture:
“I do not have a religion, but I can say
that hell exists. I believe in hell” he
said, and went on to recount the torment he had
been put through in Spanish police quarters. His
account shook the people in the courtroom, like
Mikel Egibar’s had earlier.
When his
lawyer reminded him that the charges against him
are based on the references to him made by Mikel
Egibar and Xabier Alegria during detention, he
afforded full credibility to the torture accounts
of both co-defendants to whom he dedicated “the
strongest of hugs”.
Despite the fact that the questions of the prosecution
were directed at relating Olarra to ETA’s
“foreign relations apparatus”, neither
of the prosecutions’ submissions mentions
this.
Next, Elena
Beloki took the stand. She denied having been
a member of Xaki although she said that she had
worked in international relations within the political
party Herri Batasuna.
Session
Nº44
Xaki Piece: Mikel Egibar recounts terrible torture
and denies the charges
At the
beginning of the session, the judge called David
Soto to the stand. Although Soto is charged within
the Ekin piece of this macro-case, he was unable
to attend the session at the time, due to serious
illness. At the time, the judge stated that she
would not suspend the oral hearings, but she would
keep the defendant fully informed with DVDs of
all the sessions. These DVDs were never sent to
Soto and his lawyer raised an objection to do
with the violation of his client’s right
to an effective defence. Finally, the judge sustained
the objection, agreeing to delay David Soto’s
statement until he has received and seen the DVDs.
Then Mikel
Egibar was called to the stand. He had to resign
himself to giving his statement in Spanish, due
to the mistakes made by the interpreter. Egibar
is charged with being a member of ETA, which he
denied, as he also denied that Xaki had anything
to do with the armed organisation or followed
its orders. He explained that Xaki was created
to spread knowledge about the Basque Country in
the international sphere and to express Basque
solidarity with other peoples in the world. He
denounced the fact that, in his view, there is
great “manipulation of information”
regarding the Basque Country, something he is
very familiar with, because as a child and for
a number of years he lived in Belgium.
Mikel Egibar
gave a detailed account of the torture he suffered
when he was arrested and explained how the Guardia
Civil made him memorise the statement which they
later used to incriminate other defendants. According
to his account, the moment of arrest itself was
very violent, in front of his baby son and his
pregnant wife. He told the court how, after the
torture he suffered, he was unable to utter a
single word when he was taken before the judge,
so he was sent to isolation in jail for three
days, until he was able to make a statement before
the judge.
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03/04/06
Session Nº 43
Oral hearings adjourned until April 18
Olatz Altuna
was the last person to give a statement in the
part of the case dealing with the Joxemi Zumalabe
Foundation. After this, the part dealing with
Xaki began. When the first of the defendants,
Mikel Egibar, stood up to give his statement,
the newly incorporated lawyer José Ramón
Antxia requested an adjournment because he had
not been allowed enough time to prepare the trial
properly. The public prosecutor concurred and
the Tribunal decided to adjourn the hearing until
April 18.
Session
Nº 42
Mikel Aznar states that the kind of work the Joxemi
Zumalabe Foundation carried out can be checked
in the minutes
Mikel Aznar,
for whom the prosecution is requesting 10 years
in jail, stated that the Joxemi Zumalabe Foundation
never promoted civil disobedience, and that the
nature of their work can be seen in the minutes
of their meetings.
After Mikel
Aznar, Olatz Altuna took the stand. The prosecution
is also requesting 10 year in jail for her, because
of her work in the said Foundation. As Mikel Aznar
did before her, Altuna explained what her role
was in the Foundation, always in relation to grassroots
movements. Thus, she explained how they informed
the various groups of a number of courses they
could do, and overall, how her work was office-based
and aimed at merely providing information to and
aiding the coordination of various popular and
grassroots organisations.
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29/03/06
Session Nº41
University lecturer Mario Zubiaga and lawyer Alberto
Frías take the stand: “civil disobedience
is essential for democracy”
Representatives
of 55 Basque social actors have expressed their
support for the defendants by gathering outside
the courthouse in the Casa de Campo and reading
out a manifesto signed by about 200 social groups.
Mario Zubiaga
has been a lecturer at the UPV (University of
the Basque Country) for the last 18 years, in
subjects such as Constitutional Law or Political
Theory. He has written various books and other
pieces and has spoken at talks, courses, debates
etc. The central part of his academic career,
as he explained, is based on the analysis of social
movements and he has deep knowledge of the strategy
of civil disobedience, closely linked to many
of these movements. He gave the courtroom a master-class.
He defined
civil disobedience as a way of taking part in
politics, which is “not only legitimate,
but also essential for the Rule of Law, so that
its does not become stagnant”. As backup
for his argument, he quoted the German philosopher
and sociologist Jurgen Habermas, who, in one of
his essays, described civil disobedience as “essential
for democracy”.
The prosecution
is accusing Zubiaga, together with the other members
of the Joxemi Zumalabe Foundation, with “promoting
one of the axes of ETA’s nation-building
strategy”. In response to this accusation,
Zubiaga complained that “because of having
the same aims” the prosecution holds the
pre-assumption that there is an organic relationship
between social organisations, political parties
and the armed organisation, in a strategy based
on people being “presumed guilty”.
“It is a diabolic, Kafkaesque, Mac Carthyist
vortex, because now we have to try to prove we
are innocent”.
“The nature of an organisation is defined
by the means it employs, not by its aims”
and the added that “what makes ETA be ETA
is the means it uses. If it took on a strategy
of civil disobedience, it would no longer be ETA”.
Zubiaga
was a member of the Board of the Joxemi Zumalabe
Foundation since 1996 and, as his workmates before
him; he explained their work to support social
movements in the Basque Country. These groups,
he insisted, “have managed to put issues
onto the political agenda, when they never used
to appear”, such as women’s rights,
gender violence or environmental issues.
Before
he finished his statement, Zubiaga spoke to the
Tribunal and expressed his hope that “this
trial becomes the closure of the authoritarian
era opened in 1998, and to open up a new time
of hope”.
Next, lawyer
Alberto Frías took the stand; the public
prosecutor has not accused him of any specific
actions, merely of being part of the Board of
the Joxemi Zumalabe Foundation. As such, he is
accusing Frías of being a member of Ekin
and is demanding his incarceration for twelve
years for “cooperating with an armed group”.
In the
lengthy document with the prosecutor’s conclusions
(172 pages) there is a single sentence, in page
103, referring to Frías, and the 12 year
request. Alberto Frías challenged public
prosecutor Enrique Molina: he would answer the
prosecutor’s questions if the prosecutor
agreed to answer the set of questions Frías
would ask. The judge replied for the prosecutor,
who could not hide his anger upon reading the
questions, and said, “He will not reply”.
Frías
asked Molina whether he thought “a person
could be a member of an organisation without knowing
it”
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28/03/06
Sessions Nº 39 and 40
Statements
by Sabino Ormazabal, lawyer Pepe Uruñuela
and Iñaki O’Shea, part of the Joxemi
Zumalabe piece.
Sabino
Ormazabal declared that civil disobedience is
a necessary instrument to face injustice and is
incompatible with violence. Ormazabal repeated
what he said when he was arrested in the year
2000, that the Joxemi Zumalabe Foundation worked
to promote cooperation among social movements.
He explained
in length what civil disobedience is “this
course of action is risky, and I accept this risk,
but I am not prepared to have someone accuse me
of something I have not done”. He insisted
that his opinions were “a personal attitude,
not directed by anyone”.
After Ormazabal,
Iñaki O’Shea, a member and co-founder
of the Joxemi Zumalabe Foundation was called to
the stand. At this point, the lack of seriousness
throughout the proceedings was shown again, because
the Public and the Private prosecutions are accusing
José María Ignacio O´Shea
Artiñano of membership of Ekin and of “promoting
ETA’s civil disobedience strategy”.
“Are you that person?” asked lawyer
José María Elosua. “José
Mari is my brother, I am Ignacio María”
he replied.
He explained
that right from the moment he was arrested, when
he realised there was a mistake, he had tried
to correct it, “Because I do not want to
bother my brother” to no avail. He was called
to this trial as José María Ignacio,
and as was seen yesterday, within the case documents
there is a police record of his brother, with
a photograph, fingerprints, etc. “That is
not me” he said, annoyed. Following Elosua’s
request, the police record was removed.
Pepe Uruñuela
has worked as a lawyer in Iruñea for almost
three decades, defending the anti-military movement,
the squatter movement and other “lost causes”
as he said yesterday.
He is the
only defendant to reply to the questions asked
by the public prosecutor, Enrique Molina, to date.
Uruñuela denied being a member of Ekin
and explained that “these charges have disturbed
me, because my ideas are opposed” to the
said political organisation, the legitimacy of
which, as well as that of its members, he nevertheless
defended before the court. He even remembered,
as other defendants have done, how Ekin was created
in public, at an event in Iruñea, and that
its members had names and surnames.
>
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27/03/06
Session Nº 38
More statements from defendants in the Joxemi
Zumalabe piece
Fernando
Olalde, an economist from Donostia, has worked
at a consultancy for 25 years, together with lawyers
Carlos Trenor and José María Elosua.
As he said yesterday, he comes from a wealthy
background in the capital of Gipuzkoa, where his
mother’s side owns the wealth coming from
a relative who returned from the Americas and
where his father, one of the founders of Krafft,
was successful in the sector of antifreeze for
cars.
Nevertheless,
he has always been socially conscious, which led
him to deplore “a system that allows a few
people to make a mint, while others die of hunger”.
This is
why, when his father died in December 1994 and
he was told he was entitled to a 180 million peseta
inheritance, he knew that he would not use the
money for his own personal benefit. That was the
beginning of a road that has taken him to the
Audiencia Nacional.
Together
with Iñaki O’Shea, Sabino Ormazabal,
Carlos Trenor and Pepe Uruñuela, he set
up a foundation with an initial capital of 100,000
pesetas, to which they all contributed in equal
parts. Shortly after that, Olalde donated his
entire inheritance.
He explained
to an astounded Tribunal that is not used to such
generosity that they used the formula of a donation
because “I did not want to appear publicly
as a patron”. “This was possible until
Garzón turned up” he said regretfully.
With that
money, the Foundation began its work. About twenty
people have been at some time members of the board
of this foundation, the aim of which has always
bee, according to Olalde, to promote debate and
discussion among Basque social organisations,
to aid their members with training and learning
and to promote interrelationships.
He denied
that Joxemi Zumalabe substituted ASK and explained
that, “it has nothing to do” in terms
of structure, aims, and ways of working. “When
I heard that this was the charge against us, I
was stupefied” he said.
Session Nº37
Mikel Zuloaga
According
to the Public Prosecutor, Mikel Zuloaga is the
author of “ETA’s civil disobedience
strategy”. This defendant explained that,
quite to the contrary, his document, entitled
“Piztu Euskal Herria” was written
as a basis for reflection by Basque social organisations
and he wrote it of his own accord, with the hope
that it would receive replies and contributions.
In his
statement, Zuloaga rebated the prosecution’s
argument and rejected the idea that the Joxemi
Zumalabe Foundation had had any part in writing
the document, which he wrote “in his own
hand” and also denied that it had been ETA’s
idea.
Zuloaga
explained that he wrote “Piztu” aiming
for it to be an “open framework for discussion”
directed at collective and social organisations
in the Basque Country, which sought contributions
from these groups and was centred on civil disobedience
as a strategy towards a national project, “A
formula for resistance, thinking about micro-politics
more than about macro-politics”.
During
his statement, in which he only answered the questions
by his lawyer, Zuloaga stated he could not believe
the accusation against him and denied having had
any links to ETA.
On this
point, he stated that “there is no evidence
linking me to ETA, and the only people who seem
not to have realised this are the police, the
prosecutor and judge Garzón. There must
be a reason for this”:
Zuloaga,
who was not a member of the Joxemi Zumalabe Foundation
when he was arrested under Garzón's orders,
accused the Spanish state of “dismantling
totally peaceful movements”. He also declared
that “if I am brought back to the Audiencia
Nacional, I hope it is for having carried out
civil disobedience, because they allowed me no
time to start”.
When Mikel Zuloaga heard about the police raid
against Joxemi Zumalabe and that the members of
the Foundation were being accused of having written
the document that he had written, interpreting
it as “ETA’s strategy of civil disobedience”,
he spoke to his lawyers to try to sort out the
mistake and explain that it was he who had written
the document and that there was no link to the
armed organisation. His lawyers wrote to the Audiencia
Nacional explaining that their client was prepared
to go before the judge. He received no summons
and one night the police violently entered his
home and arrested him, while his son and wife
saw everything.
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22/03/06
Session Nº 36
Iribarren
states that all the organisations in the Basque
left-wing movement carry out their work publicly
Former
Regional MP, accused within the Ekin piece, highlighted
the fact that the organisations in the Basque
left-wing movement carry out their work in an
autonomous and independent way and that there
is no organisation that exerts control over the
rest, and, although there are relations and links
among them, there is no subordination. He also
stated that they all carry out their work in a
public manner.
He also
spoke about ETA, saying that ETA speaks in its
own name and that if anyone wishes to talk to
that organisation, they must do it through their
representatives. He added that the alleged organisation
“ETA-KAS-Ekin” is but a fabrication.
The prosecution
argues that Iribarren was the “National
Leader” of Ekin, on the basis of two videos,
which, according to the prosecution, depict Ekin
meetings. Iribarren does not appear in one of
the videos (that day he was in hospital) and he
regretted that the prosecution had not even taken
the trouble to watch the videos.
After this,
Oiakue Azpiri and Marta Perez took the stand.
They were both local councillors for the political
party EH at the time of their arrest. They denied
having been members of Ekin.
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21/03/06
Session Nº35
Iker Casanova and Patxi Gundin take the stand
The afternoon
session began with Iker Casanova’s statement.
Casanova, who is still being held in prison, like
Ruben Nieto, stated that nobody controls the Basque
Prisoner’s Collective from the outside.
Casanova
was not arrested together with the other defendants
in the Ekin piece, but two years later. Iker Casanova
is accused of being a member of Ekin and being
in charge of this organisation’s funds,
which he denied.
Patxi Gundin
took the stand after Casanova. Gundin said he
was a member of Ekin in his community and that
he worked in the area of culture. He denied that
the creation of Ekin was ETA’s idea.
Session Nº34
Xabier Balantzategi and Ruben Nieto make their
statements. Another recess caused by missing documents
The session
began slightly late. The first defendant to take
the stand was Xabier Balantzategi, a lawyer accused
of being a full-time member of Ekin, which he
denied. According to his explanation, Ekin always
carried out its activities in a public manner.
Next, Ruben
Nieto began his statement, which had to be stopped
because his defence lawyer requested several documents
included in the increasingly famous 75/89 proceedings,
which, as is becoming usual, could not be found.
After a
recess, Nieto’s statement was resumed (he
is currently being held in prison). As a member
of the Basque Political Prisoners’ Collective,
he considered the idea that this Collective’s
decisions were controlled from the outside “an
aberration” (Baltasar Garzón argues
this is one of Ekin’s lines of work) “we
do not need third parties to realise what our
living conditions are and what to do to face these
conditions. We make the decisions on all these
things, with our limitations, our defects and
our abilities”. “Currently, Basque
prisoners are strongly committed to a conflict
resolution process, despite the circumstances,
despite the fact we have comrades dying in jail.”
Nieto
insisted that he has never been a member of ETA,
of KAS or of Ekin; rather, he said, he was press
and communication officer for the political party
Euskal Herritarrok.
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15/03/06
Session
Nº33
Juan Mari Mendizabal continues, Paul Asensio begins
Once Mendizabal
finished his statement, in which he reminded the
Court that his work was always work to denounce
the repression suffered by the Basque language
and Basque language speakers, Paul Asensio went
on to take the stand.
He gave
an explanation of the political moment when the
organisation Ekin was created and the reasons
why it was created. Asensio, as other defendants
have done before him, decried his being charged
in this trial do to his political work. He also
denied that Ekin was created following orders
from ETA or that it was created to control the
Basque Political Prisoners' Collective.
He regretted
not having been allowed to explain why he had
refused to answer the questions posed by the prosecutions,
“it is very tough, to have to come here to give
details of your life, when they are requesting
a fifteen-year jail sentence for you”.
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14/03/06
Session
Nº 32
Carlos Trenor, Imanol Iparragirre, Juan Mari Mendizabal
Trenor, who
is a defendant as well as a lawyer for the defence
in this macro-trial, expressed a double protest,
as soon as he took the stand. He denounced the
“lack of consideration” towards David Soto as
he had not been correctly treated, regarding his
illness. He also denounced the fact that language
rights were not being upheld, referring to the
innumerable problems with the translation.
Imanol Iparragirre highlighted the idea that “nobody
can be a member of ETA without knowing it”. He
criticised the fact that a ten year old case against
him, of which he was acquitted by the Supreme
Court is being used against him again and he also
declared that his statement to the Guardia
Civil at the time was made under torture
“I'm not good with dates, but there are things
one cannot forget, and I haven't forgotten the
torture I suffered”.
Juan Mari Mendizabal, also charged within the
Ekin piece, explained that he has worked in favour
of Euskara for over 20 years and that this was
also what he did inside Ekin. He explained that
the Basque language is in a “life or death” situation.
Finally, it is important to highlight the fact
that David Soto has suffered an attack on his
right to privacy, as the nature of his illness
is undoubtedly private information.
Session Nº 31
Olatz Egiguren takes the stand
In her statement,
Egiguren stressed the public nature of Ekin's
activity, a project of which she became a part
because she felt “abertzale and euskaldun” (a
Basque patriot and Basque speaker). She denied
Ekin had been created following ETA's instructions
and said that rather, it had been the result of
a reflection process inside the Basque National
Liberation Movement. She explained that Ekin carried
campaign work and work to denounce rights violations,
as well as nation building.
Egiguren had serious problems to get the interpreter
to translate her words correctly.
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13/03/06
Session
Nº30
The Tribunal refuses to adjourn the hearing
Although
the Tribunal had followed the criterion that all
the defendants have to be present at all the hearings,
it was ignored on this occasion, because David
Soto had to undergo urgent and delicate surgery
and the Tribunal decided not to adjourn the hearing.
The public prosecutor suggested the defendant
could follow the trial “on a DVD”, and idea that
the Tribunal backed. The question therefore arises,
why the other defendants are not allowed to use
the same system instead of having to travel to
Madrid every week and having to spend three days
a week there.
After this, Ana Lizarralde and Olatz Egiguren,
both charged within the Ekin piece, went on to
take the stand. Once again, Judge Angela Murillo
prevented the defendants from explaining the reasons
why they were refusing to answer the questions
posed by the public prosecutor.
In her statement, Ana Lizarralde underlined the
public nature of Ekin, denying it was ever a clandestine
organisation. She rejected the idea that Ekin
was a substitute for KAS or that it had been created
following instructions from ETA.
After Lizarralde, Olatz Egiguren took the stand.
The session had to be interrupted when the interpreter
became unwell. The fact that the session was adjourned
due to this and not because of David Soto's serious
condition should be noted.
Session Nº29
Adjournment requested due to serious illness of
one of the defendants
David Soto
had to go to the doctor today, so his lawyer requested
today's session be suspended. The request was
denied and Ana Lizarralde was called to the dock.
Later on, news was received that David Soto would
have to undergo urgent surgery the following day,
so his lawyer requested an adjournment again.
The Tribunal replied in a rude manner, saying
they would give their decision in the afternoon.
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08/03/06
Session Nº28
Lawyer Txema Matanzas takes the stand
Matanzas
claimed that there are certain “lies” in the police
reports on which Case 18/98 is based. These would
have been willingly inserted by the Police, while
in other cases; there are “mistakes” by the Police.
This is the context in which he has set the link
made by the prosecution between the Basque Political
Prisoners' Collective and Ekin. Txema Matanzas
highlighted the public nature of Ekin, an organisation
that worked in the fields of culture, social and
economic issues, language and education. He denied
Ekin was created by ETA.
The lawyer
denied this association directed and controlled
the prisoners, as the public prosecutor maintains,
and stated that his relation to the Basque Political
Prisoners' Collective was strictly limited to
his work as a lawyer and had nothing to do with
being an intermediary between the prisoners and
the armed organisation, which is the prosecution's
thesis. He stressed the fact that the Collective
makes its own decisions.
He also
denied having ever toasted anyone's death (Garzón
accused him of having done so after the death
of a PP town councillor).
07/03/06
Session Nº27
Cross examination of the defendants in
the Ekin piece begins
At 17.00
the session began. During this session, Xabier
Alegría finished making his statement and
Xabier Arregi, a defendant in the Ekin piece,
took the stand. Arregi declared he was never a
member of KAS, but he did decide to become a member
of Ekin. According to his explanation, this organisation
had no intention to control the organisations
of the Basque National Liberation Movement, but
rather, its aim was to work towards nation-building.
Session Nº 26
The alleged evidence linking Alegría
to ETA are excluded from the proceedings
Lawyer
Arantza Zulueta finalised her cross examination
of Xabier Alegría and the alleged police
reports included in Proceedings 75/89 had still
not been found, even after a 10 minute recess.
The Chair of the Tribunal ordered the cross examination
to continue, to which Zulueta has objected, because,
as she reminded the Tribunal, both the State Prosecutor
and the Private Prosecution base their charge
that Alegría acted under orders from ETA
on the said documents. Following another recess,
to search for the documents requested by the defence,
the Chair of the Tribunal has had to acknowledge
the fact that the alleged evidence was nowhere
to be found.
All the
defence lawyers have signed a request for all
the pages contained in Proceedings 75/89 to be
numbered.
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06/03/06
Session Nº25
Xabier Alegria continues with his statement
During
his cross examination, Alegría explained
the creation, nature, aims and functioning of
KAS, of which he was a member until it disbanded.
He insisted that being an activist in KAS and
a member of ETA was incompatible.
He expressed
surprise that anyone would consider KAS as a clandestine
organisation, when, having been a spokesman for
the said organisation, he had given many press
conferences.
Session Nº 24
The Audiencia Nacional had to hear Xabier
Alegria’s torture account
The Monday
session began, as foreseen, with the cross-examination
of Xabier Alegría, form whom the prosecution
has requested a sentence of 51 years in jail.
Alegría recounted the tortures he suffered
in Guardia Civil custody, when he was
arrested in the operation against Egunkaria
in February 2003, and how he was made to give
a statement in custody under pressure and torture.
He was made to rehearse this statement to the
Guardia Civil up to three times, until
the Guardia Civil were sure that it was
what they needed. When he was taken before the
investigation judge, although he initially expressed
his wish to remain silent, the judge insisted
upon his questions, and he finally began to answer,
because after the days in incommunicado detention
and the torture, he had lost control over himself.
He reminded
the courtroom of the fact that he had been arrested
twice previously and that he had not complained
he was tortured, because the treatment he had
received from the Policía Nacional
on those occasions had been "correct"
01/03/06
Session Nº 23
After Gorostiaga and Trenor's statements,
the session was adjourned
During
the hour-long session yesterday (from 10.23 to
11.30) Pablo Gorostiaga and Carlos Trenor were
called for cross examination (the latter is also
acting as a lawyer for Gorostiaga). However, most
of that time was used by the Court Secretary,
trying to find documents from the 75/89 Proceedings.
The prosecution
is accuses both of them of being members of KAS,
although, as seen during the two previous days,
the Proceedings kept secret until now contributed
no solid evidence to sustain the charges. This
was yet another example of the lack of substance
of the evidence Baltasar Garzón used to
build his charges against the defendants in Case
18/98. The only evidence the Police had in order
to accuse Pablo Gorostiaga of being a member of
KAS was an interview he gave to the newspaper
Egin, in 1993.
Following
Gorostiaga and Trenor's statements, the session
was adjourned. On Monday the trial will continue,
with Xabier Alegria's statement. This defendant
has been waiting to give his statement since January
9.
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up
28/02/06
Session Nº 22
Proceedings 75/89 show the lack of evidence
against the defendants
The afternoon
session, in which Jabier Salutregi, Teresa Toda,
José Luis Elkoro and Patxo Murga took the
stand, continued in a similar vein. The proceedings
known as 75/89 proved the weak basis of the charges
against the defendants. There were many incomplete
documents, often with no signatures, containing
unsubstantiated accusations. Several of these
documents mentioned news items as a basis for
the accusations. For instance, a Guardia Civil
report about Elkoro used the phrase "según
los MCS" (according to the media) in
order to support its argument.
Session nº21
Supplementary cross examination begins
Supplementary
cross examination. This is the term used to refer
to the statements being given by defendants who
had already taken the stand before the content
of Proceedings 75/89 was known to the defence
lawyers.
Going back
to the beginning of the oral hearings is, to say
the least, irregular from a procedural point of
view.
Thus, the
trial has recommenced in the light of the evidence
contained in the said Proceedings. Bixente Askasibar
and Bigarren Ibarra have taken the stand for a
second time. Again, they both denied having been
members of KAS, as stated in some of the police
reports contained in the Proceedings, several
of which have no signature, and there is no way
of knowing who wrote them.
The
defence has asked the Court Secretary to read
out a police report dated 1994, where the police
state, "There is no evidence or verified
data about people who are at a leadership level
in KAS"
>
up
27/02/06
Session Nº20
Trial adjourned, procedural actions moved
back to beginning. Oral sessions will recommence
from the beginning tomorrow
The defence
requested all procedural actions taken to date
to be voided, due to defencelessness of the defendants,
because the preliminiary proceedings had not been
available to the defence before the beginning
of the trial, as set out in law. On the other
hand, the private prosecution, carried by the
Association of Victims of Terrorism (AVT), did
have access to these pieces of evidence, as shown
by the fact that they cross examined several of
the defendants on the basis of this evidence.
The defence
argued that several of these documents refer to
defendants who have already given their statements,
so the trial mu7st be declared void and recommenced
from the beginning, in order to allow these defendants
to defend themselves in view of this evidence.
Thus,
after considering the request, the Tribunal decided
to adjourn the hearing and begin the trial again,
with a cross-examination of the first defendant,
Bixente Askasibar, who had already made his statement
on November 21, the first day of the trial.
>
up
14/02/06
The Court excludes Elkoro from the trial due to
illness
At
today’s session, the Tribunal made a decision
which agreed with the request by Public Prosecutor
Enrique Molina to exclude Iñigo Elkoro,
who is in a serious condition due to an intestinal
crisis, from the trial and thus be able to continue
with the sessions. There was debate between the
prosecution and the defence on this issue, as
the defence requested an adjournment until both
Elkoro and Egibar recovered and the trial could
continue normally. Their defence lawyer reminded
the Tribunal of four cases which were identical
to this instance and where the Supreme Court ordered
the trial to be suspended.
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up
13/02/06
Session Nº19
Sessions adjourned for health reasons
One of
the difficulties of carrying out macro-trials
is upholding the requirement for all defendants
to be present in the courtroom. This was part
of one of the preliminary objections at the very
beginning of the trial, because three of the defendants
are in jail in the French state and no extradition
request had been made. Now the problem stems from
the fact that several of the defendants have health
problems that have prevented them from being present
in the courtroom when the trial was due to recommence
today, and others who were present this morning
despite their serious condition. Iñigo
Elkoro is in hospital, in Donostia, following
an operation due to an intestine crisis. Mikel
Egibar, despite having a temperature of 40º
C, was called to the courtroom. The Tribunal is
assessing the possibility of excluding them from
the trial and trying them apart.
As readers
will remember, the Tribunal itself decided that
all defendants had to attend all the sessions
of the trial and there have only been a few exemptions
from this decision for defendants who, following
a request for justified medical causes have been
allowed not to attend one or two sessions.
>
up
30/01/06
Session Nº18
Trial adjourned, again, due to the difficulty
to prepare a defence
On January
13, representatives of the Basque and Spanish
Lawyers' Councils held a meeting with the president
of the Audiencia Nacional and the chair
of the Tribunal which is trying Case 18/98. Following
the meeting, the attendants gave an impression
of normality and stated all the guarantees for
the right to a defence would be upheld.
Nevertheless,
although the defence has formally been given time
to gain access to the piece of investigation carried
out by judge Garzón and kept secret for
16 years, the lawyers for the defence have been
unable to prepare properly, due to its disproportionate
size. To date, the defence lawyers have not been
able to finish scanning the 100.000 pages that
make up these proceedings, they have not been
able to study the documents that affect their
clients and do not have knowledge of the evidence
against them. Therefore, today, when the time
granted by the Tribunal for the said work expired,
and the hearing recommenced, with a view to question
the first of the defendants for the Ekin piece,
counsel for the defence requested a month in order
to finish copying the said documents, analyse
them and prepare their defence. Zulueta insisted
on the impossibility of beginning cross examination
with sufficient guarantees for the defendants
and complained that the principle of “equality
of arms” for the parties, because both the State
Prosecution and the Prosecution for the AVT had
had access to this piece of evidence in order
to prepare their accusation.
The
prosecution opposed the request for adjournment,
stating that all the evidence against the defendants
was included in the 18/98 case files. However,
this is not the case for possible evidence favourable
to the defendants, which may serve to exonerate
the defendants and which, for obvious reasons,
the State Prosecutor has not incorporated into
the case, as it may damage his interests. The
Private Prosecution, carried by the Association
of Victims of Terrorism argued that the request
by the defence was a manoeuvre seeking a delay
which would cause a clash between “the right to
a defence and the right to a trial without delay”.
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up
12/01/06
Session Nº17
Trial of Case 18/98 adjourned for 20 days
The Tribunal trying
Case 18/98 has issued a decision adjourning the
trial for 20 days, so that "there is not the slightest
hint of defencelessness". Thus, the defence will
have a little time to examine the evidence used
during the investigation of the Case, which they
had had no access to until now.
A meeting will take place ion January 13 between
the Dean of the Bizkaia Bar Association, Nazario
de Oleaga, the president of the Spanish Audiencia
Nacional, Carlos Divar and the chair of the Tribunal,
Ángela Murillo. The president of the General Council
of Spanish Lawyers will also attend the meeting.
This body has also expressed its backing for the
defence lawyers. The Bar Associations of Araba
and Gipuzkoa have also supported the defence.
The General Council of the Judiciary Power (Consejo
General del Poder Judicial - CGPJ) has expressed
concern and the member for the Basque Autonomous
Community and Catalonia at the said institution,
Alfonso López Tena, admitted that "this situation
is not good for the defendants; it is not good
for Justice and it is not good, for citizens in
general, to be in a situation in which proceedings
work like this" and he explained that "if the
CGPJ can somehow intervene, via a disciplinary
procedure, if they consider this is the case,
or mediating or intervening within its capacity
in order to resolve this situation" there should
be a request for it to be so.
This confirms what the defence has repeatedly
stated: the lack of order in the investigation
proceedings, the documentary chaos and the hasty
manner in which the entire proceedings have been
carried out. This may also be evidence of the
incapacity of the Audiencia Nacional to develop
the trial with full guarantees.
>
up
10/01/06
Session Nº16
Adjournment due to the impossibility to guarantee
the right to a defence
The session began with Xabier Alegria refusing
to answer the questions posed by the prosecution,
denying the legitimacy of a special court which
"supports the use of torture as a working method".
Alegria reported having suffered brutal treatment
at the hands of the Guardia Civil when he was
arrested in relation to the Egunkaria Case, another
piece in this macro-case. Arantza Zulueta, his
lawyer, began asking her questions and the first
piece of documentary evidence she requested was
not found. The court produced several documents,
but the court secretary was unable to ensure these
were in fact the ones the lawyer had requested.
Following several recesses to search for the said
document, the chair of the Tribunal, Angela Murillo,
acknowledged "we have received these proceedings
in an awful state" and went on to tell the defence
lawyer: "this is what we have; if you want to
question the witness, go ahead and question, otherwise
don't"
In view of this situation, the defence lawyers
requested the protection of the Bizkaia, Araba
and Gipuzkoa Bar Associations, as well as of the
Basque Council of Lawyers. On this point, we must
remember that at the last session in the year,
the judge decided to allow the defence lawyers
a few days during the Christmas holiday period
to study the documents included in preliminary
proceedings Nº 75/89, which had been kept secrecy
since 1989 for the defence, whilst both the state
and the private prosecutions had had access to
these documents right from the beginning. The
defence lawyers were able to see the chaotic situation
of these proceedings for themselves -disordered,
illogically organised- and verify the fact that
it is impossible to analyse the enormous amount
of material in the proceedings -over one hundred
thousand sheets of paper, in one hundred boxes-
in such a short period.
Nazario Oleaga, the Dean of the Bizkaia Bar Association,
and President of the Basque Council of Lawyers
requested a meeting with Angela Murillo, the Chair
of the Tribunal, and with Carlos Dívar, the President
of the Audiencia Nacional in order to see whether
the defence's complaints are founded and, if so,
to demand appropriate measures to be put in place.
In his request, Mr. Oleaga stated that "the right
to a defence cannot be exercised in the way established
by the Constitution". He insisted that "I cannot
hide my concerns about the events the complaints
refer to, mainly regarding deficient access to
the documentary evidence requested before the
beginning of the trial, given its extraordinary
volume and the non-provision of copies to the
lawyers who requested the said evidence"
The defence lawyers insisted that "we believe
our actions are fully justified, and
we shall therefore submit to our Deans' criteria.
Therefore, they announced they would not attend
the trial until the said meeting has taken place
and only after hearing their Deans' opinion.
>
up
21/12/05
Session Nº 15
Problems to gain access to evidence kept secret
since 1989
A
few days earlier, Judge Murillo acknowledged the
fact that “we have come across an amount
of boxes that even I could not have imagined.
The amount of material there was unimaginable”
in reply to the request by the defence for permission
to study the evidence in Prior Proceedings 75/89,
which have been kept under official secret since
1989. At first, she agreed that the defence could
gain access to those proceedings; which are made
up of police reports, transcriptions of tapped
phone conversations and other documents. She signed
an order to that effect. In that order, Judge
Murillo stated the defence lawyers would have
access to all the material, except the “identity
protection piece”.
In
the session today, the judge revoked that decision
arguing that there was a need to confirm the origin
of the documents, which apparently total 500 tomes.
Nevertheless, the judge allowed only a few hours,
during various days in the Christmas holidays,
for the defence to review the content of these
500 tomes. Lawyer Iñigo Iruin asked “what
powerful reasons” there were to act in such
a manner. Murillo insisted that “we have
come across an unimaginable amount of boxes”.
“It is difficult even to imagine what there
is in there” emphasised the judge, proving,
without meaning to, the irregular way in which
these proceedings have been carried out. Iruin
complained that the right to a fair trial was
being violated. His colleagues agreed with his
complaint.
As
to the session itself, Carlos Trenor finished
his statement referring to the “Joxemi Zumalabe
case” piece. The prosecutor accuses this
foundation, the board of which Trenor is a member,
of “promoting the civil disobedience strategy
designed by ETA”. The labour relations lawyer
completely denied this thesis. He explained
the aims and the work of the Joxemi Zumalabe
Foundation towards supporting and aiding social
movements, and he stressed the fact that it had
no links to any political groups.
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up
20/12/05
Session Nº 14
The first of the lawyers gives his statement
Carlos
Trenor was the next person to take the stand to
explain his activities in Ardatza. Thus, he said
that although he was appointed to the Board of
Directors following a request by Ramón
Uranga –who has been left out of the trial
for health reasons- he only agreed due to Egin’s
difficult situation. Still, he acknowledged that
he did not take part in meetings or have any knowledge
of economic data. Carlos Trenor was arrested two
years after the closure of Egin, also charged
with being part of the “ETA-Ekin civil disobedience
initiative” –which will soon be dealt
with in this trial- and that was when the police
seized his computer. He took the opportunity to
denounce the fact that a large part of the documents
he was preparing for the defence of Egin was in
that computer, and therefore the “right
to a defence” was violated.
Session Nº 13
Statements deny involvement in the businesses
on trial
This was
the content of Maite Mendiburu’s statement,
who said her activities only had to do with her
family and the hairdressers that her family has
run for 26 years in Orereta. After giving details
of her arrest, she referred to the questions the
investigation judge had put to her, implying she
was a member of Ardatza S.A. which she flatly
denied. When asked if she had knowledge of the
accounts of the said publishing company, she replied,
“With my basic education, how would I know
anything about accounting?”
Pablo Gorostiaga,
after listening to a long list of his public and
institutional activities, explained how his friend
Isidro Murga had asked him “because everyone
knew me” to sign the minutes of the foundational
meeting of Ardatza S.A. However, after that moment,
he had no part in its activity. His lawyer, Carlos
Trenor, who is also a defendant in the Ardatza
piece, was the next to take the stand.
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19/12/05
Session Nº 12
Statements continue, with a new secretary
The surprise in this session was due to
the substitution of the court secretary, María
Mariscal de Gante, who had taken part in the trial
up to then, by a member of the Fourth Section,
José Mariano García. The Tribunal
did not appear to consider this important, as
it began the session as if nothing had happened.
Following questions by the lawyers, the explanation
that “it was necessary due to matters of
service” was given. However, this does not
seem to be a satisfactory explanation. A person
working at a certain tribunal has been exchanged
for another who fulfilled exactly the same role
in another tribunal. This change of people with
identical functions may be due to deeper reasons,
unknown as yet. The unofficial reason appears
to be the fact that the earlier secretary had
a good working relationship with the lawyers for
the defence, whom she had furnished with certain
documents –the list of pieces of evidence-
without an order from the tribunal. It would appear
that there is an attempt to punish this helpful
attitude and to have a more “submissive”
secretary.
Isidro Murga finished his statement during this
session. The prosecution holds that Orain S.A.
attempted to avoid paying the Social Security
and is requesting long jail sentences. The former
manager denied the charges and explained that
they attempted to fulfil their commitments right
from the beginning. As evidence of this, he produced
an agreement they reached with the Social Security
following long negotiations. The payment was “feasible
and viable” despite the situation of economic
strangulation Egin was being subjected to through
the systematic denial of official grants. Murga
also mentioned decisions by the Supreme Court
stating that the Administration had an obligation
to reimburse Egin with certain pieces of funding,
which were never in fact paid.
As to the charge of membership of ETA, he denied
it as well, as he denied the idea that there was
a “political council” that controlled
the editorial line. On the idea that Egin was
financing ETA, he said that “keeping the
paper itself afloat was hard enough in itself”.
Session Nº 11
The hearing
was adjourned because nine of the defendants had
a road accident on their way to the trial
The Basque Country
is about 400 kilometres from Madrid, which means
they have a long and dangerous journey by car.
It was a matter of probability. Six vehicles have
to travel to the oral hearings in Madrid every
week. The defence had already made a request so
that the defendants involved in parts of the macro-case
that are not being analysed at a given time do
not have to attend those sessions. Nevertheless,
the judge rejected the request. Although the nine
defendants were not seriously injured –they
were diagnosed as having cervical, dorsal and
lumbar contractions, dizziness and disorientation-
the accident meant the hearing had to be postponed.
After they were seen by a forensic doctor, the
judge allowed them to leave the courtroom.
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14/12/05
10th Session
The public prosecutor maintains the charges against
Otero and Zapiain
The exceptional
character of this tenth session comes from the
fact that the state prosecutor, Enrique Molina,
has recovered the charges against Otero and Zapiain,
after the Fourth Court of the Audiencia Nacional
dropped them, following an appeal by the defence.
Thus, Zapiain confirmed that the investigation
judge, Baltasar Garzón, had charged him
with “cooperation” but the Fourth
Court had revoked this decision. Four years later,
the prosecutor is charging him again and even
rising the degree of the crime by charging him
with “integration” in an armed group.
The prosecution bases its case on an alleged “double
accounting” in Egin, therein attempting
to find a connection with ETA’s financial
network. Iñaki Zapiain denied the existence
of several sets of accounts and said that it was
true that certain data regarding the sales and
income of the newspaper had been inflated with
an aim not to lose ground in the Oficina de Justificación
de la Difusión (OJD) –Office for
the Justification of Diffusion- ranking. The OJD
is a private entity that quantifies such data,
later companies use the data provided by the OJD
to decide whether to advertise in certain media
or not. Zapiain said that inflating these data
is not only not a crime, but is also a commonplace
procedure in most media. In fact, although he
did not want to give specific examples, he said
that several media have been expelled from the
OJD for doing this.
Xabi
Otero’s situation is similar. Now he is
charged with “cooperation”, which
carries a possible sentence of up to ten years,
plus another four for “punishable insolvency”.
Otero recounted how, in his statement to Garzón,
I told him: ` I am not, and I have never been
a member of ETA´ and then he said: ` I don’t
care´. Then I said: `look here, you may
not care, but I do´”
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up
13/12/05
9th Session
The chief editor and vice-editor of Egin declare
before the court
The prosecution
is attempting to prove that Salutregi and Toda
held a meeting, in February 1992, with José
Luis Alvarez Santacristina, a.k.a. Txelis, the
ETA political leader where it was decided to instate
them as Chief Editor and Vice-Chief Editor and
to place Egin “at the disposal of ETA’s
strategy”.
After refusing
to answer the public prosecutor’s questions,
because he “violates the right to free speech”
and the prosecutor for the AVT (Association of
Victims of Terrorism) because “we have not
caused any victims of terrorism”, Javier
Salutregi recounted his work at the helm of the
closed newspaper. “200 armed men closed
it down, when all there was in there was ink and
paper. Freedom of the press is a concept coined
centuries ago”. As to the charges, Salutregi
admitted having met with Txelis, but not the content
the prosecution ascribes to the meeting: “it
was an especially important moment: there was
talk of a possible talks process” so they
decided to interview Txelis in his capacity as
“interlocutor for ETA”. As to his
work as Chief Editor, he reminded the court that
“I was already doing this work earlier on,
together with Xabier Oleaga”
Salutregi
first and Toda later admitted having spent two
days there. “This is usual because of the
security measures taken by these clandestine organisations
and due to the complex nature of the questions
we posed”. It was not immediately published
because Alvarez Santacristina and some of his
comrades were arrested in Bidart, and then “we
found we had notes from an interview with someone
who was no longer an ETA interlocutor, but a prisoner”.
However, it was published a few days later.
The Spanish
daily “El País” published a
piece –prior to the beginning of the 18/98
proceedings- saying that the police knew Salutregi
and Toda had met with the interlocutor for the
armed organisation. No proceedings were opened
then, thereby confirming the fact that there was
no criminal content in their journalistic initiative.
Six years later, Garzón carried out a rather
different interpretation of the events. According
to this interpretation, Egin would be involved
in criminal activities for several reasons: the
existence of a journalistic investigation team,
the fact that the newspaper had a fax machine
in Paris, the use of terms such as Euskal Herria,
its support for the repatriation of Basque prisoners,
publishing a weekly political chronicle or the
existence of a section with brief messages which
would allegedly be a mechanism for ciphered communication
between members of the armed group.
Teresa
Toda also tried to explain, following questions
by her lawyer, the reasons why she had decided
not to answer the questions by the prosecution,
an issue which may play against her if not properly
explained. Angela Murillo, the Chair of the Tribunal,
cut her short, saying “that is if no interest,
I make these decisions”. The journalist
protested against this veto and demanded “the
right to free speech we are being denied in this
courtroom”.
8th Session
The statements on the Egin Board of Directors
The prosecution is
attempting to establish the thesis that the Board
of Directors –the technical management organ
of Egin- was the one that controlled the editorial
line of the newspaper “to serve ETA’s
theses”. Jexux Mari Zalakain denied this
argument explaining that “it was the editors
who specified the day-to day editorial line”.
The Board only made sure that the foundational
bases of the newspaper were upheld; he listed
these bases: “the Basque Country is a nation,
Euskara is its national language, we are opposed
to any form of oppression, we are the voice of
those without a voice and we are independent from
economic and political powers”.
As to other
matters to do with economic management, after
explaining that he, having a PhD in “Technology
of Printed Media” fulfilled his function
as an advisor to the Board on these issues, he
said that they had no intention to undercapitalise
the publishing company, Orain S.A. in order to
defraud the Social Security, which is another
of the charges against him. However, this would
not be enough of a reason to charge him with membership
of an armed group and therefore, as in the case
of AEK, this would be outside the jurisdiction
of the Audiencia Nacional.
12/12/05
Hearings adjourned
The morning
session was adjourned because several of the lawyers
had to attend another trial affecting one person’s
freedom –a trial against a prisoner- and
this took priority.
The
afternoon session was also cancelled due to a
labour dispute with the translators, who refused
to attend as they believed their overtime quota
for the year had been fulfilled. On this day a
group of about forty people congregated opposite
the Audiencia Nacional holding fascist banners
and symbols; they insulted the defence lawyers,
the defendants and the observers. One of the defendants
was hit by a stone.
> up
30/11/05
7th session
Defendants in the Egin case continue to make their
statements
During
the session today, the document introduced by
Judge Angela Murillo, of her own accord, was read
out. This political document belonged to Andoni
Murga, the son of Patxo Murga, who was declaring
at the time and who said that the document was
journalistic material for his professional work.
Then Manu
Intxauspe took the stage. He denied having belonged
to ETA or KAS and said he took part in creating
Egin because it was grassroots project and because
the other newspapers at the time were Franco-ist.
Jose Ramon
Aranguren explained his work in Egin involved
responsibility for marketing and sales. Aranguren
told how they worked on promotion, in order to
counter the advertising boycott implemented by
the public institutions. When his defence lawyer
asked him whether he knew if there had been more
than one set of accounts or of any attempts to
hide assets, he was adamant “impossible.
That would have contravened the spirit of our
work”. He added that “this spirit
was about being independent from all political
and economic powers”, so they would have
allowed no control of the kind the prosecution
is arguing.
The Tribunal
then called Jexux Mari Zalakain, who, when asked
whether he would answer the prosecutor’s
questions, said he would not reply to “those
who closed Egin down”. After the public
prosecutor’s questions had been read out,
the session was adjourned.
On
another account, whilst it had been expected that
all 59 defendants would not have to attend all
the oral hearing sessions, particularly those
sessions dealing with parts of the case where
they were not involved, judge Angela Murillo told
the defendants that they would all –except
Jokin Gorostidi, due to his health- will have
to attend all the sessions in the macro-case.
>
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29/11/05
5th Session
Defendants included in the piece on the daily
newspaper EGIN begin to declare
Joxean
Etxebarria was questioned about the companies
investigated in the previous sessions and about
his involvement in the newspaper “Egin”.
He admitted he had been involved in some aspects
of the newspaper and that he had been the sole
administrator of the communication company Ardatza.
He stated that “all the steps taken were
within the law”. The state prosecutor accuses
him of having placed Egin under the control of
KAS and of having redirected funds to ETA. The
defendant denied having been a member of KAS and
explained that these companies actually made a
loss, so it would have been impossible for them
to finance ETA.
Later on,
Jose Luis Elkoro, who was a member of the Board
of Directors of Orain between 1982 and 1995, had
to explain the reasons for the changes in head
editor during that period. He said these were
the result of internal situations and not of decisions
by ETA. He also explained how Egin developed as
a grassroots communication project, based on the
contributions by thousands of people and he said
that the difficult economic situation of the paper
was due to the “lack of advertising from
public bodies and institutions”.
The most
serious issue taking place during recent days
is the attitude by the Chair of the Tribunal,
Angela Murillo, who keeps censoring the defendants’
statements to prevent them from expressing their
views on the politics of this trial. The defendants
wish to express what the political context that
brought on the charges was and therefore why the
refuse to answer the questions by the public and
private prosecutions. Murillo constantly interrupts
the defendants’ statements leading to an
objection by the defence, regarding the impossibility
of free expression by the defendants. For instance,
lawyer Jone Goirizelaia explained that, whilst
it may be possible to consider a question by the
defence to be “impertinent”, it is
not possible to consider the defendants’
reply in the same way, because he or she must
be allowed to freely express whatever he or she
considers to be appropriate. She added that this
attitude is contrary to the right to a fair trial,
included in Article 24 of the Spanish Constitution
and Article 6 of the European Convention of Human
Rights. Lawyer Iñigo Iruin also mentioned
a European Human Rights Court decision, voiding
a court decision because the defendant had not
been allowed to freely express his reasons. “He
must be allowed to explain” said Iruin.
6th
Session
The defence challenged the Tribunal due to “manifest
partiality”
In view
of the attitude of the Tribunal, censoring the
statements by the defendants, the defences have
challenged the Tribunal (objected to the Tribunal
and requested it is changed) due to “manifest
partiality” and “an attempt to substitute
the prosecution” on the part of the Tribunal.
This second objection is based on the fact that
the Tribunal secretary `produced a document which
had not been requested by any of the parties,
and had been i8ncluded in the case by the Tribunal
itself. In addition, immediate adjournment was
requested, until this issue is resolved.
The three judges retired to consider but shortly
returned to the courtroom to say that “there
is no reason to adjourn”. The chair, Angela
Murillo, attempted to justify the inclusion of
the document in the case of Joxean Etxebarria
saying, “We have asked for it to be read
just to know what it says”.
At
the end of his statement, José Luis Elkoro
made a new attempt to speak about his political
activities, which in his view is “what is
really on trial”, and the chair refused
him permission to speak, again, and made him sit
down. The defendants protested loudly and the
judge ordered the courtroom to be vacated and
adjourned the session.
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22/11/05
Sessions 3 and 4
The questioning of members of several companies
accused of being part of ETA continues
Vicente
Askasibar finished his questioning by acknowledging
his membership of LAB and KAS and, when his lawyer
asked about the magazine “Ezpala”,
the activity of companies such as Gadusmar –codfish
exporters- Untzorri Bidaiak –a travel agency-
the Euskaria choir, the fiesta association Kaskagorri,
and the association for the promotion of Basque
language AEK, he stated that they all carried
out “public and well known activities”.
José
Luis García Mijangos began his statement
saying that he would not answer the questions
of the state prosecutor or the private prosecution,
explaining that “I have had to come here
against my Hill”, at which point he was
interrupted by the chair of the tribunal, judge
Angela Murillo, who said “we are not interested
in the reasons why you will not answer”.
Lawyer Jone Goirizelaia invoked García
Mijangos’ right to explain his stance, but
again, the chair prevented him from speaking on
this aspect.
Iker Beristain,
in jail due to other matters, was also censored.
Segundo Ibarra, Andoni Díaz, Inma Berriozabal
and Juan Pablo Diéguez also declared and
denied the charges. In response to the question
of whether the businesses where they worked were
financing ETA, their answers highlighted the idea
that they were loss-making and could therefore
finance nobody. Beristain stated that during the
time he worked in AEK, several legal audits were
carried out.
As
to the documentary chaos denounced by the defence,
the majority of the pieces of evidence –all
the physical material considered as evidence-
continue to be missing, which involves a clear
risk of them being manipulated; only a few have
been located. In addition, the defence had to
call the tribunal’s attention to the fact
that three different tomes of the case have the
same numbers: 1, 2 and 3.
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21/11/05
Sessions 1 and 2
After the preliminary objections raised by the
defence were disregarded by the tribunal, the
oral hearing began
Before
the beginning of the oral hearing, the defence
mentioned preliminary issues which required resolution
by the tribunal and which, if not solved, may
lead the trial itself to be void. The defence
referred to the fact that there were pieces of
evidence missing from the courtroom at the beginning
of the hearing and that all the evidence was not
in order. This would prevent progress of the trial
and contradiction between the parties, as would
be seen later on. On the question of the absence
of two defendants (Unai Hernández and Francisco
Aramburu, whose whereabouts is unknown) the defence
stated that they had not been declared absent
in law and therefore still had 10 days to appear
before the court. As to the third absent defendant
(Peio Jon Sánchez, currently in jail in
France) the due process of extradition had not
been initiated. The defence also referred to their
objection against the expert witnesses (Guardia
Civil and Policía Nacional officers) who
took part in the investigation of the case, which
should make them unable to take part as expert
witnesses. Finally, the defence denounced the
fact that, during the investigation, the activity
of a number of companies, legal entities, was
intervened and these had received no notification
about the beginning of the trial, which placed
them in a situation of total defencelessness.
Following a brief report by the prosecutor, opposing
each and every objection presented by the defence,
the tribunal dealt with all the objections within
half an hour, rejecting them in one single decision.
Thus, having hardly given arguments for its decision,
the tribunal hastily began questioning one of
the 59 defendants, Vicente Askasibar. Following
his refusal to answer the questions posed by the
state and the private prosecutions, his lawyer
requested several documents included as evidence
of the charges against Askasibar to be shown.
The Secretary was unable to find them among the
600 tomes of documents and pieces of evidence.
The first of the preliminary objections raised
by the defence was thus shown to have been appropriate.
The hearing was adjourned.
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