They also ask to investigate the six former ETA leaders accused of the attack in Santa Pola for attempted genocide

The Association against Impunity and for Human Rights extends its doctrine in search of imprescriptibility

MADRID, 27 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Spanish Association against Impunity and for the Advancement of Human Rights has filed a complaint this Monday in the National Court (AN) where it asks Judge Manuel García Castellón to investigate the six former ETA leaders accused of the attack perpetrated on August 4, 2002 in Santa Pola (Alicante) for an "attempted genocide policy".

This is the second attack by the terrorist organization that the association asks to investigate as part of an "attempted genocide policy" carried out by ETA through its multiple actions, something that "until now has not been duly recognized before the courts of Justice in Spain", according to the complaint, to which Europa Press has had access.

He raised it for the first time last week before the same Central Investigating Court Number 6 for the attack perpetrated in 2000 in Sallent de Gállego (Huesca), in which the civil guards José Ángel de Jesús and Irene Fernández died, the first woman from the Benemérita who lost her life to ETA. A sticky bomb with 10 kilos of explosive blew up the car with which they were preparing to start their service.

Now, the association goes to García Castellón requesting his appearance in the investigation opened by the attack in Santa Pola, which cost the life of a 57-year-old man and a 6-year-old girl, daughter of a Benemérita agent, to to be able to exercise popular accusation.

For this terrorist action, the examining magistrate has already charged Juan Antonio Olarra Guridi, alias 'Juanvi'; Ainhoa ​​Mugica, 'Olga'; Felix Ignacio Esparza, 'Navarro'; Mikel Albisu, 'Mikel Antza'; Ramón Sagarzazu, 'Ramontxo', and María Soledad Iparraguirre, 'Anboto'.

The association maintains that these six former ETA leaders should be investigated "for the terrorist murders carried out in connection with bankruptcy and in connection with a crime of attempted genocide."

As in the case of Sallent de Gállego, the association argues that ETA's crimes present "the three clearest defining notes of a context of putting genocide policies into practice": the existence of a persecuted group whose leadership is " In the spotlight"; "the elimination through massacres and selective assassinations" of the forces of order called upon to protect said group; and "expulsion or flight" from the territory of the rest of the group.

Thus, it considers that the terrorist action in Santa Pola "can in no case be approached as a disconnected or isolated massacre", but that it should be understood "as part of a very long previous chain, and that would continue later".

The complaint argues that neither this "nor any other ETA murder after May 24, 1976, "327 of the 379 unpunished ETA murders", can be considered prescriptible.

To reach this conclusion, the association relies on the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court (TS), according to which when there are two related crimes, the limitation period must be that of the most serious, in this case the alleged attempted genocide, which is imposes that of terrorist murder.

This legal reasoning leads him to anchor the expiration period in the crime of genocide --which he defines as imprescriptible--, thus exceeding the term set at the time for terrorist murder, 20 years.

Regarding the legal time to be able to prosecute genocide, the complaint indicates that there is no doubt that in Spain it is an imprescriptible crime at least since the entry into force of the Penal Code (CP) of 1995, on May 24, 1996. .

To this he adds that when the crime of genocide was incorporated into the Spanish Criminal Code, in 1971, its initial statute of limitations was 20 years, which means that all acts constituting genocide that had not expired when the 1995 Criminal Code came into force should be considered imprescriptible.

The complaint reasons that this implies that "any act of genocide perpetrated since May 24, 1976 (20 years before, its previous limitation period) was not yet prescribed at the time it became imprescriptible."

"That is to say: 327 of the total of the 379 ETA murders that are unpunished today would not have actually prescribed, and could be reopened and continue to be investigated at any time, if the prescription of such hundreds of murders and their bankruptcy and related relationship were correctly understood. as part of a policy in the degree of attempted genocide, based on the resolution that may emanate from a case like this", he affirms.