The AN sentences the former head of ETA Carmen Guisasola to 20 years for a 1990 murder but will not go to jail

The sentence comes after the Supreme Court ordered a repeat trial, understanding that the facts had not prescribed

The National Court has sentenced former ETA leader Carmen Guisasola to 20 years in prison for the murder of police officer Ignacio Pérez Álvarez committed in Galdácano (Vizcaya) on April 30, 1990 by exploding a bicycle bomb. However, she Guisasola will not enter prison since she obtained the final release of the sentences accumulated to the maximum limit of 30 years in November 2014.

This sentence of the Second Section of the Criminal Chamber, collected by Europa Press, instead acquits the other two ETA members on trial, Óscar Abad Palacios and José Ramón Martínez, understanding that their self-incriminating statement before the Police is not sufficient proof of charge.

The resolution comes after the Supreme Court ordered a repeat trial, considering that the facts were not prescribed, as the National Court had established to acquit them in the first instance. The Supreme Court also forced another court to judge the facts again, and now, with this new Chamber, the National Court condemns Guisasola to 20 years and 1 day as a necessary cooperator in a crime of murder with the purpose of terrorist and the payment of different amounts to the 60 injured by the damage caused by the explosion of the explosive device.

It also agrees to the application of the mitigation of undue delays since the events occurred more than 33 years ago and the reopening of the procedure occurred a decade ago.

The 91-page sentence, a presentation by magistrate José Pedro Vázquez, indicates that after analyzing the evidence taken at the oral hearing, they consider it proven that Guisasola, in the first weeks of 1990, after the surveillance carried out on the policeman Ignacio Pérez Álvarez, " decided to end his life, as an action of the terrorist organization ETA, to which he belonged, framed in the Vizcaya command".

He adds that for the commission of the attack he chose the method of the explosive device, which he had in an apartment in Bilbao and handed it over to another or other members of the terrorist organization so that they could place it and activate it remotely.

In its resolution, the court details various indications that lead it to consider the defendant guilty, such as that at the time of the events she was a member of ETA, that the band claimed responsibility for the action, that it followed the 'modus operandi ' of other terrorist actions, as well as that the defendant herself planned attacks to end the lives of soldiers and members of the security forces, as occurred in this case.

In addition, it points out that the defendant "owned and dominated" at that time the Bilbao house used as a safe house and in which explosives were kept. She warns that her fingerprint was found inside her and that in that building, two months after the attack, materials were found with which the explosive device used could be manufactured.

"The court cannot believe that all the facts of which there is direct or circumstantial evidence and which have been stated are due to chance and it feels convinced that the defendant (...) intervened decisively and decisively in Galdácano's deadly action beyond all reasonable doubt, through the manufacture of the explosive device that ended the life of Don Ignacio", they argue.

He did it, they add, "knowing the destination of said device and by transferring it, already manufactured, to another person, so that he could install it in the optimal place to end the life of the deserving policeman."

On the contrary, the Chamber acquitted the other two accused of these acts, Óscar Abad Palacios and José Ramón Martínez, considering that self-incriminating police statements cannot be used as they do not have proof of charge proving their participation in the terrorist action.

THE PROVEN FACTS

The sentence states that, according to the prosecutor, it was around 2:50 p.m. on January 30, 1990 when Óscar Abad Palacios and José Ramón Martínez activated the device placed in the saddlebag of a bicycle that they left parked next to the Seat 124 by radio control. of the policeman The Public Ministry indicates that both the information on the daily activities of the agent and the bike already prepared with the explosive were provided to them by Guisasola and a second member. Both supervised the actions of the command.

In the proven facts, the court indicates that in that year the command was operational, and that Guisasola was indeed the one who decided to end the life of the agent, however it exonerates the other two ETA members -who denied the facts in the trial- because it has not been proven that they were the ones who left the bicycle that was carrying the explosive device parked, nor that they activated it, as the prosecutor maintained.

The court resorts to various jurisprudence of both the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court to assess the self-incriminating police statements. And it points out that "the possibility of taking into account statements made outside the walls of the oral trial does not reach the statements given at police headquarters" which, since they are part of the report, only have the value of a complaint.

This is how the Chamber understands that "the report becomes the object of evidence and not the source of evidence" so that the facts that are stated before the police, with the result that the facts that "have to be introduced in the oral trial through authentic means of evidence.

"It is necessary to conclude that if we disregard the self-incriminating statements made by the defendants Óscar and José Ramón before the Police, we do not have prosecution evidence that proves that they handled what was related to the bicycle-bomb on the day of the proceedings," he concludes.

THE GUISASOLA CASE

Legal sources consulted by Europa Press confirm that the former head of ETA, one of the highest representatives of the band's dissidents who are members of the so-called 'Vía Nanclares', will not see her personal situation affected by this new sentence given that the facts, of early 1990s, are related to the sentences imposed on him for acts from that same period.

As they point out, once the sentence becomes final, Guisasola will request the accumulation with the previous sentences and will remain in the same 30 years completed. Regarding the possibility that he entered prison provisionally until this accumulation is resolved, they point out that, although it is technically possible, it is not foreseeable that it will happen.

Guisasola, arrested in France in 1990, definitively left prison after the Third Section of the Criminal Chamber of the National Court approved her definitive discharge after applying a new liquidation of her sentence in November 2014.

The magistrates took into account the criteria of the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) that annulled the retroactive application of the so-called 'Parot doctrine' and also applied a discount of a 10-year sentence served by the ETA member in France.