France rejects the delivery of Kantauri to testify before the judge investigating the murder of Miguel Ángel Blanco

The AN requested permission to interrogate him given that the former head of ETA was handed over for different acts

MADRID, 1 Jun. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Paris Court of Appeal has refused to extend the surrender order of former ETA chief José Javier Arizcuren Ruiz 'Kantauri' requested by the judge of the National High Court who is investigating whether the leadership of the terrorist group was responsible for planning and ordering the murder of the Popular Party councilor in Ermua Miguel Ángel Blanco.

In a resolution dated May 11, to which Europa Press has had access, the French court rejects the European arrest warrant issued on February 4, 2021 by the head of the Central Court of Instruction Number 6, Manuel García Castellón, considering that it is "empty of content".

Kantauri, who is serving a sentence in the Murcia II Penitentiary Center, was handed over by the Gallic country for events other than the murder of the mayor, which forced the National Court to request permission to question him about those events.

García Castellón issued that order as an extension of the one issued in 2016 by the former judge of the National Court Eloy Velasco. The judge made that decision after Kantauri himself, from whom he was going to take a statement that year, recalled that France had not handed him over to Spain for this reason during an appearance scheduled to give an investigative statement for these facts.

The French justice also points out in its letter that "it seems" that the Spanish authorities "issued a new order" by the same procedure "without indicating" if it replaced the previous one. It is, they point out, a "procedural coincidence that never ceases to amaze."

This is a setback that makes it impossible for the magistrate to take a statement from Kantauri, one of the interrogations that he planned to carry out after, last March, he reopened the investigation into Blanco's murder after admitting a complaint filed by Dignity and Justice.

In that 138-page letter, the association directed the accusation against the nine heads of the terrorist group that allegedly made up the highest leadership body at the time of Miguel Ángel Blanco's murder, considering them "criminally and civilly responsible" for his death.

In this case, Judge García Castellón plans to travel to France to interrogate several members of the ZUBA, the highest leadership body of the terrorist group. Specifically, to take statements from Asier Oyarzabal 'Baltza', Carlos Ibarguren Aguirre 'Nervios' and Jokin Echevarría Lagisquet.

In the case of Blanco's murder, the First Criminal Section of the National Court already sentenced in 2006 to 50 years in prison the former ETA leader Francisco Javier García Gaztelu, 'Txapote', and his sentimental partner and member of ETA Irantzu Gallastegui Sodupe, 'Amaia' as perpetrators.

In its sentence, the court assured that both "planned and executed the kidnapping and subsequent murder of Miguel Ángel Blanco, following the guidelines of the leadership of the terrorist organization ETA, whose most immediate objectives were the kidnapping of a PP councilor to demand in exchange for their release the approach of the prisoners of the gang to prisons in the Basque Country".

"The condemned material executor wielded the pistol. But the nine defendants here wielded the material executor in the same way. They are the real authors behind the author. And in fact they had an unquestionably superior control of the fact as we will see", argued in his complaint the association.