Zorionak!

Happy Birthday to the greatest fella on earth, my Aita!

Oops! For those of you that don't know it Aita means father in euskara.

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Blaming Basques

Yesterday at the Chicago Tribune:

Blaming Basques

International Basque Organization for Human Rights

March 20, 2004

Corte Madera, Calif. -- We learned with dismay about the terrible events in Madrid where hundreds of innocent people were killed and wounded by bombings perpetrated by terrorists ("Ruthless attacks suggest new foe," News,March 12). However, what prompted us to write to you is the wording of your headline, which stated that the blame was directed at the Basques first, and then to a front group for Al Qaeda ("Rush-hour blasts kill 192 on Madrid trains/Basques 1st blamed, but Al Qaeda role claimed," Page 1, March 12).

While the former term refers to an ethnic group (a European nationality), the latter refers to a terrorist group. This sadly reflects Spain's official stance when it comes to dealing with Basque nationalism: It leads people to think that all Basques either are involved in or support terrorist acts like the ones perpetrated in Madrid in which so many innocent people's lives were affected. Nothing is further from the truth. As a matter of fact, the majority of the Basque people in Spain and France and around the world reject any kind of violence and have long since shunned ETA for its use of violent attacks. In the future, we insist that your newspaper use the correct term, ETA, or Euskadi Ta Askatasuna. NOT Basques.

What the Spanish government is trying to do is to strip the Basques of their right to self-determination, a right enshrined in the UN's charter. The Spanish government has recently issued threats against the Basque Prime Minister Juan Jose Ibarretxe for calling for a referendum to decide about the plan the Basque government wants to put forward to redefine the relationship between the Basque country and Spain. Actions like this one and many other initiatives by political and cultural groups in the Basque country that are performed peacefully and within the frame of the law are being discredited by the Spanish government, which groups them with the actions of ETA.

Spain's Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar and his officials rushed to place the blame on the Basques, even after news came that a group linked to Al Qaeda had claimed the attacks. Spain's Foreign Minister Ana Palacio instructed the Spanish ambassadors to stick to the official version. All this has created a wave of intolerance toward the Basques and the Basque culture.

During this time of terrible sorrow and intense emotions, Spain's government should be calling for calm, not fanning the flames of hatred toward opposition politicians and innocent Basques.


Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune

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Spain Lied to Germany

Today at Deutshe Welle:

Spain Allegedly Misled Germany Over Bombings

Did Aznar deceive European allies after the bombings?

Spanish authorities intentionally withheld information and misled German officials into believing the Basque separatists ETA were responsible for the Madrid bombings, according to Germany's federal criminal bureau.

In the days following the March 11 terror attacks that killed 201 people in Madrid, Spain's intelligence authorities kept a tight seal on evidence related to the investigation and misled allied intelligence services by providing false information pointing to involvement by the ETA, German public television reported Tuesday.

Citing a source in Germany's federal criminal bureau (BKA), the national ARD station said Spanish investigators initially told a liaison official for the German intelligence service that the explosive used in the train bombs was Titadyn, a material frequently employed by the ETA in the past. Later they said it was Goma 2 Eco dynamite, an explosive the Spanish authorities claimed was also used by ETA.

It wasn't until Monday, a day after Spain's conservative government suffered a surprising loss in the general election, that officials in Madrid admitted Goma 2 explosives were not a type previously used by the Basque separatists.

German officials were also not informed until after the election that the detonator found with the explosives was not a type used by ETA. Moreover, after the arrest of three Moroccans and two Indians on Saturday, Spanish authorities continued to tell the German source in Madrid that a connection to Islamic circles could not be confirmed.

Intentionally misleading?

An unnamed high-ranking security official told ARD that such blatantly false information from an allied intelligence service was "beyond his imagination." For the German authorities, whose task it was to evaluate their own country's risk in the days following the attacks, the evidence about the explosives was the main reason why the BKA assumed ETA was behind the bombings.

Outgoing Spanish premier Jose Maria Aznar has been criticized from all sides for his attempts to pressure the media into blaming the Basque separatists rather than raising suspicion of Islamic extremists. Only after a videotape in Arabic was found claiming the blasts were the work of al Qaeda did media attention and public opinion steer away from the official line. At the same time, though, Aznar repeatedly pointed his finger at ETA and his interior ministry continued to cite evidence linking the attacks to the regional terror group.

"It was ETA. Do not doubt it for a moment," Aznar was quoted as telling Spanish journalists in personal phone calls urging them to print his statements.

Spain's interior minister Angel Acebes defended his government's information policy. "We always told the Spanish people the truth," he insisted.

The defeat of Aznar's party in the polls has been blamed to a large extent on the perception that the government manipulated information about the attacks to boost its chances in the election. Involvement by ETA in the bombings would have lent more support to the ruling party, which built its platform on high profile arrests of the Basque separatists.

German minister unhappy with Spain

German Interior Minister Otto Schily had already hinted on Sunday that Berlin was unhappy with Spain's lack of cooperation and withholding of information following the attacks.

German intelligence services only received the information from their Spanish colleagues after "some delay," the minister said, adding that "we obviously would have preferred to have been informed about certain details at an earlier stage than was the case."

The BKA also complained that Madrid restricted the sharing of information. In an internal document dated Sunday, the German criminal bureau wrote that Spanish authorities "are being very circumspect about concrete information in view of the imminent election. It would be desirable to have an open and trusting information policy."

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Egan Goes Web Wide

Today at Berria English:

‘Egan’ on the Internet too

The ‘Literatur Aldizkarien Gordailua’ is offering the chance to consult and print the works of Koldo Mitxelena, Gabriel Aresti, Jon Mirande, Piarres Lartzabal and of many other well-known authors

Juan Luis Zabala – DONOSTIA (San Sebastian)

The web site of the Literatur Aldizkarien Gordailua (archive of literary journals which forms part of the Ibiñagabeitia project) created by the Susa publishing house has put facsimiles of 74 issues of the Egan journal covering the period between 1948 and 1987 on the Internet (www.armiarma.com/andima/egan). Thanks to this, it is possible to read numerous texts of Juan San Martin, Koldo Mitxelena, Gabriel Aresti, Antonio Maria Labaien, Toribio Etxebarria, Aingeru Irigarai, Antonio Arrue and Jon Etxaide, among others. There are also single works like those of Jokin Zaitegi, Jon Mirande, Txillardegi, Salbatore Mitxelena, Frederico Krutwig, Nemesio Etxaniz and Piarres Lartzabal. It is possible not only to consult and read the facsimiled pages, but also to print them.

The initially bilingual Egan including texts in both Basque and Spanish was created in 1948 as a bulletin of the Euskalerriaren Adiskideen Elkartea and published four issues a year. During the dark days of the post-Spanish Civil War era the Basque Country’s most well-known writers who had not gone into exile used to write in Egan : Emeterio Arrese, Salbatore Mitxelena, Jose Artetxe, Gabriel Celaya, Jose Miguel Azaola, Mariano Zirikain, among others.

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Germany Denounces Foul Play

Today at Berria English:

Germany denounces information concerning attacks circulated by Madrid

Interior Minister Otto Schily cites “delays, vagueness and certain doubtful things, too”; moreover, PSOE spokesman Rubalcaba says the Aznar government knew from the Thursday onwards that it could have been an Islamist attack

Editorial Staff

Otto Schily, the German Interior Minister, declared yesterday that “there were problems” with the information circulated by the Spanish Government in the wake of the March 11 attacks in Madrid. In a programme broadcast on Wednesday afternoon by the ZDF public TV network Schily pointed out that there had been “delays, vagueness and doubtful things, too” from Madrid. So, Schily trusted the data given by Jose Maria Aznar’s government and circulated the theory that ETA had been behind the attacks.

As Angel Acebes, the Spanish Interior Minister, was attending a meeting of European Union Interior and Justice Ministers in Brussels, he was asked yesterday about Otto Schily’s declarations. Acebes, however, assured everyone that Schily had not said anything of the kind to him, had not accused him nor asked for any explanations whatsoever. Acebes declared: “We did not tell anyone any lies; we have deceived no one,” and as proof of this he referred to the declassifying and publishing of two reports by the Spanish information services. “The Spanish Government has not lied to anyone, let alone to Spanish citizens,” he pointed out. “The documents we made public yesterday constitute clear proof that we have been telling the truth from the start.”

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PP's Dark Designs

Today at Berria English:

Otegi says PP was about to suspend Araba, Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa autonomy

He added that a “Basque Stormont” could emerge from the way opened up by the National Debate Forum (Nazio Eztabaidagunea)

Editorial Staff

Arnaldo Otegi, the Batasuna spokesman, said in an interview given on Euskadi Irratia (public Basque Autonomous Community radio) yesterday that in the wake of last week’s attacks in Madrid, by attributing responsibility to ETA the Spanish Government wanted to carry out “a kind of coup”, if they had won the elections. Otegi said that on the basis of the information he had received the PP wanted to take three measures in order to implement such a state of exception and they were: “to suspend the Basque autonomy, to put the Ertzaintza police force under the control of the Spanish Interior Ministry, and to arrest people, including myself.” He added that the information had come to him “from reliable sources”.

As to his view on the results of the Spanish general elections Otegi said Basque people had experienced “a sensation of relief” at the prospect of Aznar and the PP going. Nevertheless, he felt it was “too early” to say that things would change with the PSOE, and pointed out that the socialist party's way of governing was “well-known”. With respect to the relations that the EAJ is expected to have with the PSOE, he called on the EAJ to be frank. He believed that there were two possibilities in that political context: “One for the EAJ to reach agreement with the PSOE on the EAJ’s political project, and the other for consensus to be reached among forces in favour of self-determination on certain minimum issues” He added that it was significant that he had not yet heard the word self-determination spoken by Josu Jon Imaz, Chairman of the EAJ National Executive Committee, and stressed that he would very much like to know what plan the EAJ had.

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Gurasoak Warns of Life Sentences

Today at Berria English:

Gurasoak association believes “life sentences are being handed down”

The association has organised a demo in the streets of Bilbo for March 27 in protest at the judgements that are going to be pronounced in the coming months

Gotzon Hermosilla – BILBO

The Gurasoak association has denounced the genuine “life sentences” expected to be handed down during the trials over the coming two months of many young people involved in street troubles, from what they can deduce from the public prosecutor’s demands. To register their protest, the association has organised a demonstration scheduled to start out from the Jesusen Bihotza (Sacred Heart of Jesus) square in Bilbo on Saturday, March 27.

Txusa Etxeandia, the Gurasoak association spokesperson, has announced that the Public Prosecutor is seeking more than 50 years in some of these trials set to be held over the next few days. In fact, three young people are going to be tried on March 23 and the public prosecutor is seeking 54-year prison sentences for each of them. “If we bear in mind that the judge often accepts the demand of the public prosecutor as it stands, we can say that life sentences are imposed in the Spanish State, whatever the law may say to the contrary,” said Etxeandia.

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Galindo on Release

Today at Berria English:

National Criminal Court puts Galindo on course for day release

Although he was sent down for 75 years, the rules applying to those sent to prison for less than five years are being applied in his case

Eider Goenaga – DONOSTIA (San Sebastian)

Even though it is less than four years since Enrique Rodriguez-Galindo, the former Spanish Civil Guard General, was handed down a prison sentence, the Spanish National Criminal Court has given him the chance to apply for day release. Javier Gomez-Bermudez, the Central Parole Board judge, has applied the general regulations to the serving of his sentence. Despite Galindo’s 75-year sentence and the fact that the regulations apply to prisoners serving less than five years, the judge has made an exception in Galindo’s case virtually without putting forward any arguments.

The regulations state that a prisoner will be entitled to obtain day release and go free before he or she has served half of the sentence. Galindo has been inside for four years and now he is being given the opportunity to request day release and go free, if the prison governor agrees.

The judge in question monitors the cases of Basque prisoners and applies increasingly harsher measures against them, but has given Galindo an opportunity to go free. As a reason for treating Galindo as an exception he cites the fact “that Galindo was not convicted of a crime of terrorism”, and also that he is in a position to undergo social rehabilitation; by contrast, Gomez-Bermudez’s writ makes no mention whatsoever of the seriousness of the charge and crimes committed. He was convicted of two murders and two kidnappings. The writ states that the Criminal code gives the judge the option “to apply the general regulations governing the serving of sentences in a reasoned way, after the prisoner’s case has been individually assessed and his or her personal development and situation have been taken into consideration; so long as he or she did not commit any crime of terrorism and so long as the crimes are not the acts of an armed group”. It is indeed true that Galindo was not convicted of being a member of an armed group, even though the popular indictment, the private indictment and the National Criminal Court prosecutor attributed this to him. The trial did not prove that Galindo and the civil guards of the Information Services at the headquarters of Intxaurrondo (near Donostia) had formed part of a green [the colour of the civil guard uniforms] GAL, nor that any orders had been issued for this; it affirmed that the defendants themselves had thought up the kidnapping and death of Lasa and Zabala, prepared it and carried it out.

On April 26, 2000, Galindo was convicted along with another four people of kidnapping and killing Joxean Lasa and Joxi Zabala in 1983; he received a 71-year sentence and a year later the Spanish Supreme Court increased the sentence to 75 years in response to the appeal filed by both parties in the trial, the prosecution and defence.

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Basque Importance in Iruñea

Today at Berria English:

Basque considered “indispensable” for two Iruñea City Council posts

A resolution published recently by the Navarrese High Court has suspended an advert for two City Council jobs placed in 2002

Editorial Staff – IRUÑEA (Pamplona)

In a resolution published recently the High Court of Navarre regards a knowledge of the Basque language as “indispensable” for two Iruñea City Council jobs. This decision of the court is in response to an appeal lodged by Iñaki Azkona.

Azkona lodged an appeal against the Iruñea City Council because of a decision it took in 2002 not to make a knowledge of Basque a requirement for the posts of assistant to the Basque Language Coordinator of the Department of Culture; in other words, a knowledge of Basque was not taken into consideration.

The Judge, on the other hand, made it clear that Basque was “an indispensable condition” to fill these posts. Consequently, the High Court of Navarre has suspended the advert for the two jobs.

The Euskara Kultur Elkargoa is “very grateful” for the Navarrese High Court’s decision, and has stressed that the judges have once again condemned the Iruñea City Council’s attitude towards the Basque language.

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Sayonara Francoist Vermin!

Lets get something straight here, I've been reading some notes on the newspapers and listening to some interviews regarding the terrorist acts in Madrid last week and the dismissal of the PP during Sunday election and people are saying that the Spaniards allowed the terrorist to win by disposing of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar and his daufine Mariano Rajoy.

Rubbish, the Francoist junta lost because in the last four years they have been conducting themselves like a bunch of arrogant brutes, and their actions after the bombings exposed them in their true colors.

And those colors are ugly to say the least, trying to blame Basque nationalism for the bombings they went to the extreme of pressuring the spineless fellas at the UN High Council to blame ETA for the attacks, something that the UN has never done before, Ana Palacio, the regime's Foreign Minister ordered the Spanish ambassadors to stick to the official version, Angel Acebes went to the extreme of fooling the German intelligence agency by claiming that the explosives used were the ones that ETA uses when in reality they were different.

Aznar himself telephoned newspaper's directors to make sure that they would also stick to the official version, free press my ass.

Aznar and the other PP officials tried to profit from the sorrow of the Spanish public, they did it so blatantly that enough was enough, and they expelled them the way every single pseudo-democratic government most be expelled, vote by vote, without violence.

Sayonara futhermockers!

Spain Campaigned to Pin Blame on ETA
Wed Mar 17, 8:04 AM ET Add Top Stories - washingtonpost.com to My Yahoo!

By Keith B. Richburg, Washington Post Foreign Service

MADRID, March 16 -- In the first frantic hours after coordinated bomb blasts ripped through several packed commuter trains Thursday morning, the government of outgoing Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar undertook an intense campaign to convince the Spanish public and world opinion-makers that the Basque separatist group ETA had carried out the attacks, which killed 201 people and wounded more than 1,500.

Beginning immediately after the blasts, Aznar and other officials telephoned journalists, stressing ETA's responsibility and dismissing speculation that Islamic extremists might be involved. Spanish diplomats pushed a hastily drafted resolution blaming ETA through the U.N. Security Council. At an afternoon news conference, when a reporter suggested the possibility of an al Qaeda connection, the interior minister, Angel Acebes, angrily denounced it as "a miserable attempt to disrupt information and confuse people."

"There is no doubt that ETA is responsible," Acebes said.

Within days, that assertion was in tatters, and with it the reputation and fortunes of the ruling party. Suspicion that the government manipulated information -- blaming ETA in order to divert any possible link between the bombings and Aznar's unpopular support for the war in Iraq (news - web sites) -- helped fuel the upset victory of the Socialist Workers' Party in Sunday's elections. By then, Islamic extremists linked to al Qaeda had become the focus of the investigation.

Government officials insist that they never misled the public, and that they released in a timely manner all the information and evidence they had gathered. "We told the truth at all times to the Spanish people," Acebes said on Monday.

In retrospect, however, there were signs that the government was at least selective in releasing information about possible culprits. By 11 a.m. Thursday, police had already discovered an abandoned white van in Alcala de Henares -- a town where the bombed trains passed through -- containing seven detonators and a cassette tape with verses of the Koran recited in Arabic, officials said later. Sources familiar with Spanish intelligence services said the CNI, the National Intelligence Center, had suspected al Qaeda from the beginning.

The existence of a potential link to Islamic radicals was not revealed to the public until just before King Juan Carlos spoke on national television at 8:30 p.m.

Significantly, Spanish observers said, the king, in his solemn address, expressed confidence that "the criminals will be put in prison," but never mentioned ETA or any other possible culprit. Asked whether the king was satisfied with the way the government had handled information, the palace declined to respond, citing its customary refusal to comment on government matters.

The first bomb went off at 7:39 a.m., on a jam-packed commuter train at the Atocha station in central Madrid. By 7:42, 10 bombs had exploded -- seven at Atocha, two at nearby El Pozo station and one at Santa Eugenia. Although the initial figures put the death toll at about 20, authorities knew the number would rise dramatically and that this would be the worst terrorist attack in Spanish history.

That was when officials began their campaign to pin the blame on ETA, which the Aznar government has pursued vigorously and successfully.

The government had good reason to suspect ETA, whose initials in Basque stand for Basque Homeland and Freedom. The group has killed hundreds of civilians in terrorist attacks stretching back decades. Police reported on Christmas Eve having thwarted an ETA plot to set off two bombs at a Madrid train station. On Feb. 29, police arrested two ETA members near Madrid as they drove a van packed with a half-ton of explosives.

Immediately after Thursday's bombings, Foreign Minister Ana Palacio telephoned her British counterpart, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, to say that it was ETA, according to a British official, who added, "We had no independent evidence of our own that the Spanish were wrong." Less than two hours later, Straw was on television saying, "It looks to be an ETA terrorist outrage, and that is the information we've received from Madrid."

At the same time, the Spanish Foreign Ministry was sending instructions to its embassies, saying diplomats "should use any opportunity to confirm ETA's responsibility for these brutal attacks," according to a copy of the letter published in the Spanish daily El Pais. Spanish officials have confirmed that the instructions went out, but said they were only for "guidance."

Meanwhile, Arnaldo Otegi, head of the banned Batasuna party, which Aznar's government alleges to be ETA's political wing, condemned the attack, which experts on the Basque situation said was unusual. Otegi's condemnation was given wide coverage on radio stations outside Madrid. Between noon and 2 p.m. Thursday, Catalan radio was airing discussion programs exploring the possibility of al Qaeda involvement. On one Catalan station, 91.0 FM, Otegi said in an interview that the attacks were carried out by "the Arab resistance, possibly in retaliation for the Spanish presence in Iraq."

But in Madrid, radio stations were referring to "the ETA attacks" and carried none of the discussion about whether others might have been involved.

Managing the coverage of the disaster became a priority for the government, which contacted both the Spanish and international news media, stressing the official line that the bombings were the work of ETA.

El Pais, which was preparing a special edition on the attacks, received several calls directly from Aznar, its reporters confirmed. The editor of the Catalan-based paper El Periodico said Aznar called twice. Aznar "courteously cautioned me not to be mistaken. ETA was responsible," the editor, Antonio Franco, wrote in an editorial Tuesday. At a news conference on Friday, Aznar said he had called several newspapers, saying he wanted to explain the government's view.

The government spokesman's office at Moncloa, the prime minister's office, also placed calls to at least 10 foreign correspondents during the day, according to Steven Adolf, a Dutch reporter for NRC Handelsblatt and president of the foreign correspondents club here. Most of the calls were identical, journalists said.

Henk Boom, another Dutch journalist, said he received a call from a spokeswoman at about 5 p.m. "She said she was told to tell foreign correspondents that there was one official version -- that ETA was responsible for the attacks, and only ETA," he said.

Reading from a text, the spokeswoman gave three reasons why ETA was the culprit, Boom said: No one had asserted responsibility, which followed ETA's style of not making claims for at least a week; the type of explosive was similar to that normally used by ETA; and there was no call beforehand warning of the attacks, another characteristic of ETA -- a point some journalists have disputed.

By Thursday night, with the announcement of the discovery of the van with the Arabic tape and the claim of responsibility on behalf of al Qaeda in a London Arabic-language newspaper, public doubt began to set in. The morning newspapers Friday ran side-by-side articles comparing the possibilities of al Qaeda and ETA involvement.

By Friday night, police found new leads -- the discovery of a sports bag containing undetonated explosives and a mobile telephone. At a news conference, however, Acebes continued to insist ETA was the main suspect. "How is it that after 30 years of attacks, they are not going to be the prime suspects?" Acebes said. Still, he said, "We haven't closed off any line of investigation."

At the makeshift shrines set up to honor the victims, young people gathering to light candles and lay flowers were starting to voice skepticism about the ETA claim.

On Saturday night -- hours before the polls opened -- the government announced the arrests of three Moroccans and two Indians, and the discovery of a videotape from a purported al Qaeda official asserting responsibility for the attacks. Thousands of Spaniards responded by taking to the streets, banging pots and pans in protests and denouncing the government.

That voter anger swept the Socialists back to power for the first time in eight years.

Special correspondents Pamela Rolfe and Robert Scarcia contributed to this report.

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