State Terrorism and Impunity

This article was published at Behatokia's web page:

State terrorism and impunity: the murder of Santi Brouard

On 20 November 1984 two gunmen walked into the medical practice where Santiago Brouard worked; he was a paediatrician and a leader of the political party Herri Batasuna. They shot him six times, killing him instantly. Right from the beginning, a sense that the murder had been committed by members of the state security forces under the acronym GAL (Antiterrorist Liberation Groups) was clear.

The investigation and trial for these events was to be a series of obstacles put in place by the state in order to prevent the truth becoming known and therefore the responsibility of important members of the PSOE government. Within the juridical reasoning for the trial, judge González Armengol, in charge of the investigation of the case, states that the crime was “an idea of the highest member of the State Security, financed by him, organised by persons close to him and covered up through concrete and specific orders to paralyse the police investigations”.

Nevertheless, despite these very serious aspects to the crime, the justice system has been completely unable to determine the responsibilities in the murder and throw light on this case. Twenty years later, the court case against the alleged murderers of Santi Brouard took place in the Bizkaia Province Court. Two precisions must be made: in the first place, the evident delay in the proceedings and secondly the fact that the it trial took place in the Province Court and not in the Audiencia Nacional (National Court), which is the court in charge of cases of terrorism. This last fact is not just a matter of detail, in that it means the murder of Santi Brouard is denied the character of terrorism. In the nearly 20 years that have passed since the crime, the `Brouard case´ has been through the hands of up to 10 judges and ended with a firm sentence, later ratified by the Supreme Court, in 1993. Two men, Mafiosi and without any political responsibilities, were then sentenced for having been the material agents of the murder: Rafael Lopez Ocaña to 33 years jail and Juan Jose Rodriguez Diaz aka “El Francés” to 8 years in jail. The case was reopened after the arrest of Jose Luis Morcillo Pinillos in possession of 100000 pills of Extasy. He was considered to be the co-murderer and the prosecutor requested his being sentenced to 31 years in jail. After 5000 pages of documents and over eight years of investigation the court case finally came round, in this instance with the added possibility of trying those who planned the murder from the shade of their offices.

Nevertheless the court case was full of contradictions in the statements, of incoherent accusations, of rather inconsistent evidence, etc. which meant the case was completely muddled up and preventing the people really behind the murder from being tried.

The accused for the murder of Santi Brouard:

Several police officers and high up members of the Home Office under the PSOE government were tried for various actions related to this case.

José Luis Morcillo Pinillos, an industrialist from Granada and the deceased Rafael López Ocaña a Mafiosi and usual criminal, the material agents who shot Santi Brouard.

Julián Sancristóbal, General Director of State Security, for induction and giving necessary co-operation for the murder.

José Amedo, police Sub-inspector, for induction to the murder.

Rafael Masa, lieutenant colonel of the Guardia Civil, a necessary co-operator.

Francisco Alvarez, head of the MULC (Single Command for Anti-terrorism); Jesús Martinez Torres, general inspector for information; Miguel Planchuelo, superior head of police in Bilbao; and Michel Dominguez, member of the Policia Nacional, as accessories.

During the case, the responsibility of the State Secretary for Security, Rafael Vera and the Home Office secretary, José Barrionuevo, who appeared as witnesses was also stated by several of the accused.

Court decision on 25 June

The First Section of the Bizkaia Province Court decided to acquit the three main accused - José Luis Morcillo, José Amedo and Rafael Masa- of the murder of HB leader Santiago Brouard for lack of conclusive evidence.

In the 48 page long sentence, the court considers that the events “do not constitute the penal infringements they are accused of since none of the illegal types have been proven, so that there is no criminal responsibility”. In this sense, the court underlined the fact that “the referential witnesses would have the ability to prove the events postulated by the prosecutions have absolutely lacked the will to do so”.

The lawyer for the Brouard family, Txema Montero, admitted being “very frustrated because after 18 years we have only managed to sentence one of the material murderers and the person who facilitated the weapons” .the lawyer for the private prosecution also denounced the fact that “during 18 years there has been nothing but obstacles put in our path by the Police and the State Machine” and he pointed out that “this matter will be resolved by historians”.

The fiscal, on the last day of the trial, maintained that the State Security Forces were involved in the murder and that all those responsible for the murder had not sat on the bench in court and now never will.

The daughter of HB leader Santi Brouard, murdered in Bilbao on 20 November 1984, stated that the family is “destroyed” after hearing news of the acquittal. “If the path of the courts has been closed to us, we shall look for other paths, we will not give up,” she said. According to Edurne Brouard “the family has heard of the sentence with resignation”. She had already stated both before and during the trial that the family did not have much faith in the result of this second trial for the murder of the HB leader since “those truly responsible for the murder are not sitting on the bench of the accused”. After hearing the sentence, Edurne Brouard expressed the family’s “bitterness” and the feeling of impunity since “in this State the path of justice has shown itself not to have any guarantees, as we already pointed out nineteen years ago, when we said that the State would never try itself, as we have now seen”.

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