Taking Batasuna's Case to Court

Published yesterday at the European Union site:

Basque government to challenge Batasuna party ban in EU rights court

The government of Spain's autonomous Basque region on Tuesday announced it would challenge at the European Court of Human Rights the Spanish law which banned the radical Basque separatist party Batasuna.

The move comes after Spain's constitutional court rejected a previous challenge to the new political parties law, adopted last year by an overwhelming majority of national deputies, which allows the banning of political parties deemed to support terrorism.

Acting on a request from Jose Maria Aznar's conservative government, the Supreme Court in March issued a permanent ban on Batasuna's political activities because of the party's alleged links to the armed militant group

Announcing the challenge before the Strasbourg court, the Basque government said the 2002 law "violates the precepts of the European Convention on Human Rights".

A spokesman for the regional government said the political parties law fell foul of three separate articles of the convention, breaching the right to a fair trial and freedom of association.

The Basque administration is led by the moderate Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), which consistently condemns ETA violence.

But Carmelo Barrio, spokesman for Aznar's People's Party in the Basque parliament, dismissed the latest legal challenge as a move in support of "those who justify violence".

ETA has been blamed for the deaths of more than 800 people in the course of its three-decade campaign for an independent Basque homeland.

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