The Spanish court opened an investigation against ETA for “crimes against humanity”, an unprecedented decision today but qualified “symbolic” at a time when the Basque terrorist organization has spent nearly four years without armed activity.
In a resolution released today, a judge of the Audiencia Nacional, the main Spanish criminal court, declared admissible the complaints filed by several associations of victims of “crimes of murder or kidnapping that may have been committed by members of the organization ETA terrorist from October 1, 2004 “, the date of entry into force of that figure in the Spanish penal code.
The magistrate Juan Pablo González believes that ETA’s actions can be framed within crimes against humanity that include the commission of crimes of murder or forcible transfer, among others, when committed “as part of a widespread or systematic attack against the civilian population or part of it, which is the element that makes crimes against humanity. “
” In the case of crimes of ETA attend these elements or circumstances, since the crimes were committed as part of a systematic attack against part of the civilian population, made up of groups that are persecuted for political and ideological reasons, the elimination or expulsion through coercion or terror are considered by the strategically necessary organization to achieve its political objectives, “says the judge.
Classified as a terrorist organization US and European Union, ETA is liable for 829 deaths in 40 years of attacks by Basque independence. In October 2011, he announced the definitive cessation of its armed activity but is undissolved or surrender their weapons, despite the need for the governments of Spain and France.
“Groups persecuted”
The judge dismissed González however investigate ETA leaders on charges of “genocide” as requested by victims’ associations. The “essential difference between crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide is the limitation of the persecuted groups and especially the requirement of intent or purpose of destroying the group partially or totally,” he said.
Judge, the different groups of victims of ETA-military, police, politicians and businessmen, Basque and originating from other parts of Spain – “can not be considered national group”
<. p> Although unprecedented in the history of the judicial fight against the armed Basque separatist organization, this decision is essentially “symbolic,” said a judicial source.
Also for Basque journalist Gorka Landaburu, director of the magazine Cambio 16, an expert on ETA and was a victim of a bomb package in 2001, is “a rather symbolic gesture than anything else”.
“Since justice obviously crimes ETA can not be unpunished, and we must let it work, but if ETA has committed crimes against humanity has been much more in the years 1980 and 1990 where 80% of murders and crimes are, “he told AFP.
“In the current situation with a terrorism that has definitely gone for four years, I know not what all this” he said, lamenting that since October 2011 the Conservative government Mariano Rajoy has refused flatly to dialogue with the organization to move towards its demise.
Less than a dozen deaths to armed Basque separatist organization attributed since 2004. In that period their attacks mainly caused injuries and material damage.
On December 30, 2006 a bomb in a car park at Madrid airport killed two Ecuadorian citizens, Carlos Palate and Diego Estacio. The July 30, 2009, two civil guards were killed in another attack in Palma de Mallorca in the Balearic Islands, the last committed by the organization in Spain .
In December 2007 ETA killed two civil guard in the southwest of France and in March 2010 he killed a French policeman near Paris.
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