Otegi Incarcerated

Now that the Spanish government has been exposed one more time in all its mendacity it was just a matter of time for Zapatero and his repressive apparatus to escalate their vindictive actions against the Basque nationalism.

This note appeared at Yahoo News describes the most recent move by the Spanish government against Basque politician Arnaldo Otegi, the front man for the leftist nationalist movement:

Basque separatist leader sent to jail

By DANIEL WOOLLS, Associated Press Writer
Fri Jun 8, 7:28 AM ET

Spanish police arrested the Basque separatist movement's most prominent politician on a court order for him to start serving a 15-month sentence for defending terrorism, a court official said.

Arnaldo Otegi, the 48-year-old leader of the outlawed Batasuna party, was arrested in the Basque city of San Sebastian, the National Court official said on customary condition of anonymity.

Otegi was convicted last year over remarks he made at a rally in memory of a leader of the armed separatist group ETA on the 25th anniversary of his death. He was arrested after the Supreme Court rejected his appeal.

The ruling is certain to infuriate the Basque independence movement. ETA called off a 15-month-old cease-fire on Tuesday.

Prosecutors say Otegi in effect praised terrorism, which is a crime in Spain. Otegi's lawyer said the politician was simply exercising his right to free speech and discussing ways to end the 40-year Basque conflict.

A five-judge panel at the Supreme Court ruled unanimously against the appeal.

The case then went back to the National Court, the lower tribunal that originally issued the guilty verdict. It had the option of suspending the sentence because it was less than two years, but chose not to and Otegi was arrested.

The court official said that only minutes elapsed from the time the higher court ruled to when Otegi was picked up on his way to a news conference.

The ruling is certain to infuriate the Basque independence movement.

On Wednesday, the government ordered a notorious ETA killer sent back to prison after recovering in hospital from a 114-day hunger strike, rather than let him serve out the rest of his term under house arrest, an option that had been raised initially.

By the way, this is one example of the sloppy coverage that the Basque conflict gets from "reporters" that do little else than to act as resonance boxes for the Spanish propaganda machinery.

Notice how Daniel Woolls repeats the same paragraph twice:

The ruling is certain to infuriate the Basque independence movement.

And then, he omits Iñaki de Juana's name from his next to last paragraph. Or maybe Daniel Wolls was afraid to be accused by the Spanish National Court of praising terrorism for printing Iñaki's name?

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