IBO: Angel Berroeta

More information generated by IBO:

Press Release
March 14, 2004
International Basque Organization For Human Rights

A Basque man, Angel Berroeta of Pamplona, was killed today by a Spanish National Police officer after he refused to put up a sign in his bakery condemning ETA. The police officer's wife had come to the bakery and demanded that Berroeta place the sign in his shop. He refused, telling her to "place it in your own residence". The woman went home and told her husband who then went to the bakery, angrily confronted Angel, and then shot him four times.

Angry neighbors of Berroeta gathered outside his bakery, and hung Ikurrinas (Basque flags) adorned with black ribbons. Over the past several days, black ribbons have been placed everywhere in honor of those killed in the attacks of Madrid. After the flags were hung, the police who had gathered at the scene violently charged the crowd of neighbors and ripped the flags down.

After 9/11, the leaders of the U.S. specifically called upon citizens to be calm and not scapegoat people of the Islamic faith. The Prime Minister of Spain has yet to make any similar request of his people in regards to Basques and members of Islam. On the contrary, Aznar has called for demonstrations behind the motto "With the victims, with the Constitution, by the defeat of the terrorism." The inclusion of the Constitution in this motto is clearly in reference to the proposal being made by Basque politicians for a new political relationship with Spain. Spanish government officials have repeatedly stated that they could never accept this proposal because it would change the Constitution. Aznar purposefully included this political reference, during one of Spain's most painful and sorrowful moments, in order to tar and feather Basques and their political aspirations as terrorist.

International Basque Organization For Human Rights
PO Box 225
Corte Madera, CA 94976
1 415 924-2151
www.euskojustice.org

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IBO: Spanish Embassies Lied

This just in:

PRESS RELEASE
March 14, 2004
International Basque Organization For Human Rights

Spain's Foreign Minister Ana Palacio ordered all Spanish embassies around the world to blame the Madrid attacks on ETA. This has been done even though an Al Qaeda group has claimed responsibility, ETA has denied involvement, and the explosives used were of a kind NOT usually used by ETA (contrary to what has been reported in the western media).

Just a few weeks ago, Ms. Palacio made a statement to the magazine "National Review Online" :

"The problem of the Basques, she says, is nothing less than the problem of freedom: Half the population lives under threat of terror from the other half, and what kind of life is that?"

According to Foreign Minister Palacio, ETA is guilty before the proof is in, and half the Basque population are terrorists. This is what the current Spanish government wants the rest of the world to believe. When will the United States and others wake up to what is REALLY going on in Spain regarding the Basque region? Basques abhor violence and want to see the perpetrators of this most recent horrific attack caught and punished quickly. What we are seeing instead, are Basques being scapegoated by the Spanish government. They blame not just ETA, but anyone who has "nationalist" beliefs; anyone who supports the non-violent road to Basque self-determination and anyone who dares to speak out about human and civil rights abuses occuring against Basques. Just look at the signs that the PP government requested people to demonstrate under. They read "With the victims, with the Constitution, by the defeat of the terrorism." Solidarity with victims, YES, of course! Defeat of terrorism, YES! However, the phrase "with the constitution" is a direct reference to Basque leader Ibarretxe's proposal for a new relationship with Spain, something the Spanish government says is impossible because it would be necessary to change their constitution. The PP is using this horrible tragedy for political purposes - Cry for the victims and pledge to uphold the Constitution against those Basques!

There is also the issue of Spain's general election being held this Sunday. If the ruling party, PP, keeps blaming ETA, they are bound to get more votes because they are tough on terrorism. If Al Qaeda is brought into the picture, the PP will lose votes, due to the fact that the attack would have been a direct result of Jose Marie Aznar aligning Spain with the U.S. and Britain for the war against Iraq, against the wishes of 90% of his country.

Hmmmm...


International Basque Organization For Human Rights
PO Box 225
Corte Madera, CA 94976
1 415 924-2151
www.euskojustice.org

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Angel Berroeta, Fallen Hero

Angel Berroeta, the Basque baker from Irunea has died as a result of the gun shots inflicted on him by the police officer.

Now the police is preventing his family from hanging an Ikurrina (Basque flag) at their own bakery.

And to think that the intelligence services are now 99% certain it was Al-Quaeda, I guess that 1% entitles Spaniards to go around hunting down innocent Basques, what a shame to the memory of all the innocent victims of the bombings.

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Spanish Intelligence, an Oxymoron

Today at Yahoo News:

Report: Spanish Intelligence Sees Muslims Behind Attack

1 hour, 27 minutes ago Add Top Stories - Reuters to My Yahoo!

MADRID (Reuters) - Spain's intelligence service is "99 percent certain" that radical Muslims and not the Basque separatist group ETA are responsible for the train bombings that killed 200 people, a Spanish radio station reported on Saturday.

Private radio SER, whose owners have links to the opposition Socialist Party, said the National Intelligence Center (CNI) believes the evidence points to an Islamic group, and that 10 to 15 people left bombs on the trains and fled, the radio said.

The center-right government, facing an election on Sunday, has said ETA is the prime suspect.

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Basque Escape Goats

Just last night, Bill, from the Peoria Pundit, was telling me about how after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington President Bush had issued an statement in which he strongly condemned any act of violence against Arab-Americans and/or Muslims.

Not such luck for the Basques in Spain, the Prime Minister Aznar has blamed the Basques, not only ETA but the whole of the Basque society for the sad events in Madrid. On his first speech he said that the victims had been killed "because they were Spaniards", heightening with one phrase the xenophobic attitudes of the people.

Later he has Spaniards demonstrating with banners that read "With the victims, with the Constitution and against terrorism". The "with the Constitution" part is aimed at the Basque Prime Minister Ibarretxe and every single political and cultural group in Euskal Herria that has been working peacefully and within the frame of the law towards advancing the Basque right to self determination.

Aznar and his junta have been feeding the drivel to the Spaniards that the Plan Ibarretxe, a proposal to redefine the relationship between Euskal Herria and Spain is a direct attack against the Spanish Constitution, never mind that Euskal Herria is an invaded and colonized country with its own legal frame.

Aznar's attitude produces ill sentiments from the Spaniards towards the nationalists from Euskal Herria, Catalonia and Galiza. Confused and sad some Spaniards have reacted and we have seen in the last couple of days demonstrations against the Basques in general and ETA in particular because the Spanish regime refuses the possibility that it was an Al-Qaida attack and insists on blaming ETA. The Spanish Foreign Minister Palacio went to the extreme of commanding the Spanish ambassadors to stick to the "official version" and insist to the governments and media in the countries were they are deployed that the authors of such heinous crimes are ETA, even after Al-Qaida had claimed the authory of the bombings.

As a result, today an Spanish police officer gunned down a Basque baker in the city of Irunea after the baker refused to post and anti-ETA sign on the window of his bakery as requested by the police officer's wife.

There has been multiple reports of Basque political prisoners being attacked in Spanish jail by Spaniards prisoners while the authorities doing little or nothing, or acting against the Basque political prisoners like it happened at one jail were the guards prevented them from reaching the food line at the mess hall.

Those xenophobic acts are one more legacy of Jose Maria Aznar's commitment to perpetuating Francisco Franco's fascist designs for Spain.

And I'll say it here, even if Osama Bin Laden himself claims the authory of the bombings, the sheepish Spaniards will still vote for Mariano Rajoy who Aznar tapped to be his successor

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Madrid Refuses Al Qaeda Link

Today at Berria English they take a stand against the non sense of the Spanish regime insisting on blaming the organization that refused to be behind the attacks in Madrid and allowing the one that did and has committed such bombings in the past to walk free:

Sana Aloul: “The statement on the Madrid attack is like the ones we have received in the past”

~One of the people in charge at the al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper lends credibility to the letter sent to them by al-Qaeda claiming responsibility for the Madrid attack, and rules out the possibility of links between ETA and the Arab group

Ainara Mendiola – Special Correspondent – LONDON

Even though the Arabic newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi has many offices all over the world, including one in Madrid, its headquarters are located in London’s King Street. This pan-Arab newspaper is one of the biggest. It sells about 100,000 copies a day, according to Sana Aloul, and its aim is to support human rights and democracy. The London office has a staff of 30. Aloul told BERRIA he was in a hurry; he did not want to speak in front of a recorder nor have his photo taken. On his desk he has the three-page message received on behalf of Abu Hafs al-Masri in addition to many other documents. There’s also a cup of coffee that’s been allowed to go cold. As he speaks he looks at the computer screen and suddenly reads that ETA has denied involvement in the Madrid attack. When asked if the Madrid attack has anything to do with the one against Iraq, he says he doesn’t know. He makes it clear that Saddam Hussein was “a dictator”; but he stresses that if anyone had to remove him from power, it was the “citizens” who should have done it.

Do you lend any credibility to the communiqué you received on Thursday that claimed responsibility for the Madrid attacks on behalf of al-Qaeda?

This communiqué is written in the same way as those we have received previously and has reached us through the same processes as the others. The last one we received was on the same day as the Baghdad and Karbala attacks [March 2]. That very night they e-mailed us claiming responsibility for the attacks. The communiqué looks the same and has been transmitted in the same way.

So you are sure that the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigade was responsible for the attacks.

It’s up to the security forces to verify what happened, no one can say for certain. Anyhow we weren’t the only ones to receive the message; the BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera and Reuters also received it.

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ETA Says No to Authory

One more today at Berria English:

ETA announces it is “in no way responsible” for the attack

A representative of the armed organisation read out a brief statement over the phone to the Gara newspaper and the EITB television corporation

Editorial Staff – DONOSTIA (San Sebastian)

A representative of the armed organisation announced yesterday that ETA had had nothing to do with the attack in Madrid. In two phone calls made to the EITB and the Gara daily the ETA representative read out a brief statement: “The ETA organisation wishes to announce that it is in no way responsible for the attacks yesterday [the day before yesterday] in Madrid.” Nevertheless, in declarations made during demonstrations held in the cities of the Basque Country and Spain Spanish Government ministers and PP leaders stuck to the version they had hitherto been favouring, and confirmed that the main hypothesis pointed the finger at ETA as having been behind the Madrid attack.

The EITB received the call from the ETA representative at its Miramon headquarters in Donostia at around 18.00 hours and Gara received the call at about the same time. The EITB said that the person who phoned on behalf of ETA had asked the person who took the call to record it, in order to be able to verify that his voice was the same as that of one of the two ETA members who had announced the cease-fire for Catalonia on a video. The EITB explained that at that moment they had been unable to make the recording, but said that the voice of the person who phoned coincided with that of one of the two who announced the cease-fire for Catalonia on February 18 [see news item in this English Edition: “ETA suspends armed action in Catalonia” of 19-02-04].

According to EITB sources, the Spanish Interior Ministry and the Interior Department of the Basque Government were informed about the phone call.

After being told of the ETA statement the Spanish Government and the PP stuck to the version Aznar and Acebes had been offering throughout the day. Jaime Mayor Oreja, the PP’s Deputy General Secretary, for example, did not take ETA’s statement into consideration in his declarations during the demonstration in Gasteiz (Vitoria). “Logic indicates that it was clearly ETA,” he said. When ETA announced its cease-fire for Catalonia Mayor-Oreja himself said that ETA never told lies.

Javier Arenas, the Spanish Government’s second deputy prime minister, said in Seville that the ETA statement was “of no value whatsoever”. And Francisco Alvarez-Cascos, the Minister for Public Works, Cristobal Montoro, the Treasury Minister, and Juan Jose Lucas, the Speaker of the Spanish Senate or Upper House, spoke in the same vein.

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Defying Terror

Also today at Berria English:

Defying terror

Huge waves of Madrid citizens went out onto the streets yesterday afternoon to denounce what had happened the day before yesterday and to call on people in political authority to “rapidly” clarify what took place

Editorial Staff

Hundreds of thousands of people poured onto the streets of Madrid yesterday to denounce the attacks of the previous day and the atrocity they caused. And the citizens were asking the political authorities who the perpetrators of the slaughter were.

The Madrid demonstration set out from the Colon square in the rain. A 20-metre-long banner bearing the words “For the Victims, for the Constitution and for Victory over Terrorism” was held by many people in authority: Jose Maria Aznar, the Spanish President; Felipe de Bourbon and the infantas Elena and Cristina of the Spanish Royal Family; Jose Luis Rodriguez-Zapatero, the General Secretary of the PSOE, leaders of the trade unions UGT and CCOO; Alberto Ruiz-Galardon, the Mayor of Madrid; Jose Maria Rouco, Chairman of the Spanish Episcopal Conference; Manuel Jimenez de Parga, the President of the Constitutional Court, among others.

World leaders also joined the march: European Commission President Romano Prodi; British Minister for Europe Denis MacShane; the Prime Ministers of France and Portugal, Jean-Pierre Raffarin and Jose Manuel Durao Barroso; Italian President Silvio Berlusconi; the Ministers for Foreign Affairs of Germany, Sweden and Morocco, Joschka Fischer, Laila Freivalds and Mohamed Benaisa, respectively; NATO Deputy Secretary Alessandro Minuto; EAJ leader Iñaki Anasagasti; and Jordi Pujol, the former president of the Catalan Government or Generalitat, among others.

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More Info About the Attacks

Today at Berria English:

192 dead and over 1,400 injured

Last night al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack.

Ten bombs exploding in four trains caused carnage in three Madrid railway stations.

From first thing in the morning ETA was being held responsible for the attack, despite denials late in the afternoon

Eider Goenaga

A bloody attack took place in Madrid yesterday with the detonating of ten bombs in four trains making their way to the Spanish capital. Initially, it was not thought to have been very big, but by late in the afternoon the figure was horrifying. 192 people had been killed and over 1,400 injured were being treated in Madrid hospitals. The attacks were perpetrated early in the morning, between 07.39 and 07.42 hours, and early in the morning Madrid was immersed in chaos. By 21.00 it was disclosed that a group close to al-Qaeda had claimed responsibility for the Madrid attack.

The bombs had been placed in four trains and blew up in three different stations. The first two were detonated at the Atocha station: one inside the station and another a kilometre away. According to judicial sources involved in investigation work four explosive devices had been placed on each train; in the Atocha train, however, only three exploded. Barely a kilometre outside Atocha four bombs blew up the train close to Tellez street. At lease 34 people were killed inside Atocha and 63 near Tellez street.

Less than two minutes later there was an explosion in another station. At 07.41 two bombs placed on another train at El Pozo del Tio Raimundo station went off. That was where the most people were killed: at least 67. The last explosion was in the Santa Eugenia station in the Vallecas quarter. There was one bomb that killed sixteen people. So ten bombs had been let off in four trains. It should be pointed out that three of the trains had set out from the same station, Alcala de Henares, and the fourth had begun its journey in Guadalajara. And there were more bombs. Two hours after the attack the police carried out three controlled explosions. Two in Atocha and another in El Pozo del Tio Raimundo.

In Madrid there was no doubt whatsoever as to who was behind the slaughter and the media, the authorities and others angrily blamed ETA right from the start. Arnaldo Otegi, member of the Batasuna executive committee, was the only one to say that ETA had not been responsible. Others – EA, Aralar and AB– did not rule out any hypotheses and most of them blamed ETA. Angel Acebes, the Spanish Interior Minister, did likewise, moreover “without any doubt”.

They did not even mention that there could be a second theory until about 20.30 hours. Angel Acebes informed the media that a recording from the Koran and seven detonators had been found, and indicated that all the hypotheses and investigations remained open. Acebes said that a van stolen in Alcala de Henares had been searched and that was where the recording had been found. Although he stressed that they would be continuing to investigate ETA’s responsibility, he pointed out that there were other lines of investigation.

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Islamist Link Gaining Ground

Today also at Berria English:

Hypothesis of Islamist attack gaining ground with al-Qaeda claim

After saying at midday there was “no doubt” it had been ETA, by the evening Acebes admitted that “all theories” remained open

Imanol Murua Uria – DONOSTIA (San Sebastian)

There was one version until one o’clock: it had been ETA. There were two contradictory versions from early in the afternoon onwards: Arnaldo Otegi [ Batasuna member] said it was not ETA, and Spanish Interior Minister Angel Acebes, on the other hand, said that was no doubt whatsoever that ETA had been responsible. And from 20.15 onwards one of the versions began to carry weight, because Acebes had begun to back down.

In his last appearance of the day the Interior Minister admitted that all the hypotheses remained open, yet went on to say that ETA was “the main focus of investigation”; but when he pointed out that a tape with verses from the Koran had been discovered along with seven detonators in a van allegedly used in the attack, he began to admit that an Islamist organisation could have been responsible.

It was after nine o’clock when a statement claiming responsibility signed by the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades of al-Qaeda reached the London-based daily al-Quds that credibility began to be attributed to the theory of an Islamist attack.

Furthermore, Abdel Bari Atwan, the al-Quds editor, pointed out that the claim looked genuine, because it resembled other claims that had been received in the past. Spanish Government sources indicated that they had news of the claim and that they were examining it carefully.

Nevertheless, from early in the morning the main political leaders of Spain and the Basque Country considered that ETA had clearly been behind the attacks.

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