Spanish Justice ETA investigate crimes against humanity – El Universal (Venezuela)

 DPA
 

Friday July 10, 2015 9:08 a.m.

Madrid .- The Spanish Justice investigate the leadership of ETA for crimes against humanity in connection with the murders committed by the group armed from October 1, 2004, when this type of offense entered into force in Spain.

In a ruling issued Friday, the judge of the National Court Juan Pablo Gonzalez said that “the crimes” of ETA committed “as part of a systematic attack against part of the civilian population, made up of groups who are persecuted for political and ideological reasons” , DPA reported.

He said further that the “elimination or expulsion through coercion or terror are considered by the strategically necessary organization to achieve its political objectives,” the independence of the Basque country from the rest of Spain and the annexation of Navarre.

The judge ruled, however, a crime of genocide, as demanded by the groups that took their case against ETA, considering that “the different groups of victims” of the separatist armed group “can not be considered national or part of a national group, as in the Basque country, victims and perpetrators share the same national identity and are as Spanish as the other” .

Gonzalez recalled that among the victims of ETA military and agents of the state security forces, activists and public officials of parties opposed to independence there, but also people “close to nationalism Basque “.

The open research only applies to acts committed from October 1, 2004 as the Spanish penal code did not exist until then” no rule to establish a penalty “for crimes against humanity. In that period, ETA perpetrated 12 murders.

In the car, Judge Gonzalez asked the state security forces to report on the existence of open cases concerning murder or kidnapping and the identity of the members of the governing bodies of ETA.