Egunkaria: The Harsh Facts

When I read reports about how far the Spanish "justice" goes when it comes to their obsessive harassment of the Basque people, I wish the international community would finally wake up and smell the coffee.

March of 2004 was enough proof of this, José María Aznar attempted to profit from the tragedy to aim all his artillery against anything and everything Basque, as a result one baker from Iruñea died, Angel Berroeta was murdered by a police officer off duty for the crime of not wanting to display a sign on the window of his bakery.

And what the international community did about it?

Nothing.

Earlier this week Aznar continued to spew his venom and his lies.

If the international community was consistent, right about now he should be in a cell right next to Slobodan Milosevic. Instead, he lectures at Georgetown, quite ironic.

Today at Berria English there is a note about meeting between some of the Egunkaria indictees and members of the Spanish Parliament, same that had no clue of the degree of repression deployed by clowning judges like Baltasar Garzón and Juan del Olmo, the modern day version of the Holly Inquisition.

Members of Spanish Parliament listen with concern to people indicted

It was pointed out to the CiU, ERC, EAJ-PNV, CC, ICV-IU, BNG, EA and NB party representatives that “laws passed in this House of Parliament” enabled ‘Egunkaria’ to be closed down and torture to be applied to people in custody

Imanol Murua-Uria, Special Correspondent – MADRID

The lawyers Elosua and Iruin explained the case. Elosua told the MPs that an alleged financial connection between ETA and Egunkaria had been the starting point for the investigations, but when the case had run to 70,000 pages and they had found no evidence of this connection, the funding aspect was put on one side and the basis of the accusation then became “the erroneous interpretations” and “manipulation” of some old documents alleged to have belonged to ETA. And to complete the accusation the judge resorted to “ideological incrimination”. Referring to the indictment dated November 4 Elosua used Auzmendi’s example to illustrate this: when referring to ETA in his judicial statement, the defendant said it was an “armed group” or “armed organisation” –not “terrorist”–, he admitted he knew about the Democratic Alternative, that he had signed an article along with another seven Jesuits speaking out against the outlawing of Batasuna, that he was in possession of a Basque Identity Card and that he chaired the Lizarra-Garazi talks. Elosua explained to the MPs that all these points were arguments for the indictment incriminating Auzmendi.

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