The Diplomat
The European Parliament’s Petitions Committee will discuss at its session today the conclusions of its recent visit to Spain to investigate 379 unsolved ETA crimes.
The new meeting of the Petitions Committee includes on its agenda a debate on the visit made between 3 and 5 November 2021 to Spain by a delegation of MEPs from this committee to investigate the unsolved crimes of ETA. The delegation was chaired by MEP Agnès Evren (EPP, France), and composed of MEPs Alex Agius Saliba (S&D, Malta), Vlad Gheorghe (Renew, Romania) and Kosma Złotowski (CRE, Poland). They were also accompanied by Spanish MEPs Dolors Montserrat (EPP), chair of the Petitions Committee; Cristina Maestre (S&D), Maite Pagazaurtundúa (Renew) and Jorge Buxadé (CRE).
The visit was in response to a 2016 petition denouncing that there are still 379 unsolved murders committed by the terrorist organization, and its objective was to obtain information from the competent Spanish authorities, the petitioners and the victims of terrorism regarding the aforementioned situation. The MEPs traveled to Vitoria – where they visited the Victims of Terrorism Memorial Center – and to Madrid, where they met with the petitioner, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez Arias, and the president of the Dignity and Justice Association, Daniel Portero de la Torre, and met with representatives of the State Security Forces and members of the judiciary and the Ombudsman’s Office, and held meetings with victims and representatives of victims of terrorism.
As a result of the visit, the commission made public on March 4 the draft of a report which, among other conclusions, indicates that, although “Spain is the State that has solved the most terrorist attacks” and “most of those responsible for the attacks have been brought to justice and are serving their sentences in Spanish prisons”, the Ombudsman’s figures reveal that “379 murders remain unpunished at present” and that “in approximately 44% of ETA murders, there is no judicial sentence for all the perpetrators of the crimes, which causes a lack of justice for the families of the victims”.
The report also highlights that “most of the unsolved murders (70%) were committed in the decade between 1978 and 1987, known as the ‘years of lead’, a period in which ETA was more active and committed more attacks”. Likewise, “85.8% of these crimes took place in the Basque Country and Navarre,” it adds. “The Spanish authorities undertook and continue to undertake all possible actions to try to solve the pending cases,” acknowledges the report, which also denounces that “the tributes and receptions to many of the former ETA convicts responsible for murders, upon their return to their places of origin, have regularly taken place on public roads.”
