The plenary session of Congress will debate whether it is appropriate to recognize the acts of persecution, forced expulsion of the population, selective assassinations and massacres committed by ETA as crimes against humanity and, therefore, imprescriptible, universally prosecutable and not subject to amnesty. The initiative, to which ABC has had access, seeks to put an end to the impunity of the gang leaders and has been registered this week by the PP, shortly after learning of the acquittal of ETA member Gaddafi by the National Court in application of the ‘ Atristain’ doctrine.
However, the text was previously prepared and is not related to the acquittal of the terrorist, but to the report published on April 21 by the European Parliament’s Committee on Petitions
. A resolution that urges the Spanish authorities to “exhaust the interpretative possibilities of criminal law” so that the unsolved murders of the gang do not prescribe and so that the ETA chiefs who ordered others can be prosecuted “as intellectual authors and instigators” attacks for which only the perpetrators have been tried.
Among these possibilities, he cites the recognition of the ETA murders as crimes against humanity. The figure of lese humanity was introduced in the Spanish Penal Code in 2010, one year after the last ETA attack, which means that it is not applicable to any of its crimes.
Although jurists have repeatedly warned that it is not possible to retroactively tighten the law, the PP is willing to give the political battle and embarrass the PSOE. If the Socialists support the initiative, they will seriously irritate their EH Bildu partners. If they don’t, they will be violating a political mandate from the European Parliament in favor of protecting the rights of ETA victims.
The party headed by Pedro Sánchez already went through serious difficulties during the processing of the aforementioned European report, maintaining until the last minute that it was not possible to promote investigations into ETA crimes as crimes against humanity. Just before the final vote, he rectified and supported the measure, which will now complicate his position when the debate reaches the plenary session of Congress. The fate of the initiative will depend on the position adopted by the Socialists.
There is still no date for this debate, but the Chamber’s Table will qualify the proposal next week, and from then on the PP will be in a position to raise it to the Plenary when it has a quota and considers it appropriate. The value of the initiative is political, since it has been presented as a non-law proposal and, therefore, it is not binding for the Government. In addition to seeking the agreement of Congress for this declaration against humanity, he urges Moncloa to take the same step, as well as to condition the prison benefits of ETA members to collaboration with the Justice, and to avoid acts of homage to terrorists. These last two were also recommendations of the European Parliament.
In line with Strasbourg, the popular text also emphasizes calling the authorities of Spain and the rest of the world to “investigate, clarify and do justice to all the victims” of the gang and its entourage, “pursuing all the material authors , inducers or responsible for the criminal organization. Along these lines, he wants the chamber to sign the Institutional Declaration of the Parliament of Navarra that in 2015 considered ETA activity as genocide and crimes against humanity.
In addition to urging the Spanish authorities to analyze all the interpretive possibilities of criminal law so that the ETA murders do not prescribe, the European report also called for the continuation of the investigation of unresolved cases by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, with the support of the State Security Forces and Corps without assessing the possible prescription of the case. And this “in order to respond to the families who are still waiting for justice.” Another of the recommendations made to our country is that the National High Court notify the victims of the procedural status of unresolved cases.
The resolution also recognized that there are 379 ETA murders pending resolution –a figure already endorsed by the Ombudsman–, the “situation of terror” created by the gang in the Basque Country and Navarra, and the “lack of justice” that It assumes that approximately 44 percent of their murders lack a judicial sentence “for all the physical authors of the crimes.” The European text went so far as to denounce the existence of a “consolidated situation of impunity” in our country, which violates the rights of the victims and which “particularly worries” the European Parliament, since “the human rights of the victims of terrorism” must be the first thing to guarantee. “This situation must end,” urged the European chamber.
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