Josu Ternera resorts to ETA rhetoric and blames the State for attacks that left children dead: ETA was not terrorism

He disassociates himself from massacres for which he can be condemned in Spain and regrets the victims due to the gang's "errors" and "government traps"

MADRID, 22 Sep. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The former leader of ETA José Antonio Urrutikoetxea, 'Josu Ternera', resorts to ETA rhetoric in the interview-documentary that is screened at the San Sebastián Festival when he is asked about the massacres of the 80s, with children murdered and for whom He is still awaiting trial in Spain, stating on the one hand that he regrets the "indiscriminate victims" but, at the same time, pointing out the State for an alleged lack of diligence to prevent these crimes.

"The purpose of ETA in no way was to carry out terrorism," he maintains about the Hipercor attack, lamenting the victims of the "popular classes" and "children." He speaks of "miscalculation" or "judgment" when "entering the Government's trap" and tells journalist Jordi Évole that "he is going a little too far" when he reminds him that there were soap flakes with the explosive to spread the fire and the victims burned to death.

"ETA trusted a Government, a State, whose function is to protect its citizens and by giving two notices to evict, they did not evict him, to such an extent that the State was secondarily condemned for that, because its function is "to protect society," is the explanation he gives about Hipercor.

In fact, he disassociates himself from his responsibility as the author of massacres in the 80s such as the Zaragoza barracks house, for which the Prosecutor's Office of the National Court demands 2,354 years in prison for the attack that left eleven victims, including five minors. , relatives of some civil guards whom he reduces to the category of "volunteers" willing to give everything for the country.

He also says that "there is no evidence of any kind anywhere" that places him in the ETA leadership in the 80s, another of the judicial aspects in Spain, since, in his opinion, reports from the Civil Guard indicate What they gather is that former colleagues like Elena Beloki maintained that this "may be, but it is not a statement."

Urrutikoetxea acknowledges his participation in only two attacks, the one that ended the life of the mayor of Galdákano in 1976 and, therefore, already amnestied - the bodyguard, who saved his life, also appears in the documentary -, and that of the president Franco's Carrero Blanco, in 1973, although he limited his participation to logistical support.

At the end of the interview he summarizes his 50 years of experience, valuing his "many successes and mistakes", including a prominent role in the conversations with the Basque socialist Jesús Eguiguren or lending his voice to the announcement of the end of ETA. He sees himself as a militant "in the struggle of the Basque people" and says that what he did was "direct the negotiated solution to overcome the conflict", although he never served as 'number one' of the band.

Jordi Évole asks him if he is not incurring "cynicism" when evaluating the bloodiest attacks of the 80s, to which the veteran former ETA leader, 71 years old and arrested in 2019 by the Civil Guard in France, putting an end to two decades of clandestinity, responds "not at all", an expression that he repeats on numerous occasions to dilute his dependence on "people from the ETA leadership" by placing himself within the "international apparatus", in his specific case, supposedly, unrelated to the election. of objectives or authorship of the attacks.

"There is nothing cynical about it at all, I am the first to deeply feel it that these victims are children," he says about car bomb attacks. "If you want to do terrorism, it's the easiest thing in the world," says Josu Ternera, who compares ETA with jihadism, since the latter for him is terrorism: "I don't believe in ETA's purpose at all." which was terrorism; its objective was not to make victims but to cause damage.

He then says that he "deeply feels" what he calls "indiscriminate victims." And if they are civil guards?, Évole asks him. "Well, the civil guards already know what their function was, it was to save the country, everything for the country," he responds.

"It is their voluntary work," continues Josu Ternera, for whom Civil Guard agents "can be a target of the organization" like the rest of the members of the State Security Forces and Bodies. Urrutikoetxea at all times speaks of an organization, without adding the term terrorist to refer to ETA, of whom he says that "acts in accordance with the political analysis that they do."

The same thing happens with the Vic attack, when terrorists launched a car bomb down a ramp of the barracks house, killing ten people, half of them children. "Well, the person who throws a car seeing that there are children... it seems to me that it is a wrong attitude on the part of the people in that case who are committing the action."

Josu Ternera, who admits that he joined ETA when he was 17, remembers that he was a victim along with his family of an attack by the far-right group Batallón Vasco Español in the mid-70s. This is the confirmation that there were "decades and decades of years" of violence that he also attributes to the "Spanish State" and that leads to a "conflict."

"For me and for ETA, armed violence has never been an objective in itself, ever," he goes on to say. "What ETA intended was to get the Government to sit at a dialogue table, to take us to a negotiation table to resolve the problem," he comments.

The ETA attack against Yoyes, a dissident of the terrorist organization and of whom he was a friend, gives way to a reflection that begins with "killing is not right." He then maintains that he "complied" with it and that it was not typical of "fascist tactics." "I have never considered that ETA has killed because its ideas were not shared," to which he adds that "it is evident that the organization thought it was necessary to cut off that kind of cancer."

He also talks about the kidnapping of Ortega Lara or the murder of Miguel Ángel Blanco, in 1997, although he claims that the "information he had was very limited." "I interpret that I don't see any sense in it," he says about the attack on the PP councilor in Ermua, which is why he sent his "disagreement or comments." "It was a political and human error, with irreversible human consequences, which does nothing to help."

He reviews his years in prison, his time in the Basque Parliament and the upsurge of terrorist action in the 2000s, including the so-called revolutionary tax. Isn't killing those who don't pay something typical of the mafia? they ask him. "It is sad, but a consequence of the conflict because it was necessary for the independence movement's struggle to function," he responds.

Ternera says that in recent years his detachment towards the "repressive spiral" and "insensitivity" has increased, although again emphasizing that there was a "lack of empathy on both sides, reciprocal" and that, in this situation, his objective was to bet on "conflict resolution."

"Resolving the conflict with a strategy of violent confrontation is totally contradictory," says Urrutikoetxea, who discredits the police and judicial work in the end of ETA by placing it in a "battle of the story," although he recognizes that there were "two States." above" --Spain and France-- with all their means to "complicate" terrorist activity.

When they ask him what he felt when participating in the communiqué of the end of ETA, he answers that it was "neither victory nor failure; a step that had to be taken." According to him, the attacks should have ended earlier, in 2005, and he concedes that he could have done "much more" to stop what he describes as a "crazy wheel or spiral of violence."