• TERRORISM Sánchez approaches all ETA members in five years and Otegi already marks the "future": "A horizon without prisoners"
  • Justice The Prosecutor's Office of the National Court stops ETA prisoners from being in 'semi-freedom' in Euskadi

March 24, 2023 will go down in the black history of our country as the day on which it yielded to a historical claim of ETA and culminated the euskal presoak kalera so many times chanted by those who support and cheer the terrorists in the streets. The announcement of the transfer of the last five ETA prisoners who remained outside to prisons in the Basque Country is the culmination of the repeal of the policy of dispersion of terrorist prisoners launched by Antonio Asunción back in 1989.

The application of the dispersion policy caused the demand for its repeal, together with the historic demand for amnesty for its prisoners, to become a constant demand both by the terrorist organization itself – even murdering Miguel Ángel Blanco and kidnapping José Antonio Ortega Lara therefore- as of their supportive social environment. Faced with these pressures, the different governments have used the rapprochement of prisoners as a bargaining chip, or gesture of goodwill, in the different negotiation processes undertaken with the terrorists and as an incentive to achieve their reintegration.

However, this changes with the arrival of Pedro Sánchez. In his first interview as president on Spanish Television he announced that there would be changes in prison policy. Without demanding anything change, without talking about the reintegration of anything. Changes just because. And said and done. Since then the roadmap has been clear: first progression to second degree of all ETA prisoners and approach to prisons near the Basque Country (mainly Logroño, Asturias, Zaragoza, Cantabria, Burgos and Soria); from June 2021, transfer to Basque prisons and, once there, in accordance with the Basque penitentiary model that promotes the open regime, progression to third degree and open door for the granting of conditional release by the Judge of penitentiary supervision of the National Court.

The Ministry of the Interior has always justified that these decisions were due to the strict application of prison legality. There would be more! What they have not explained is that this change in prison policy was due to a strategy previously orchestrated with some representatives of the prisoners and Abertzales leaders to ensure the necessary support in the Congress of Deputies. It was as legal to do so as it was not to do it.

And now... Home.

Carmen Ladrón de Guevara Pascual is a lawyer and teacher.

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