The People’s Parliamentary Group of the Senate will on Wednesday defend before the plenary session a surgical reform of the Basic General Prison Law (LOGP) that seeks to tighten the classification or progression of degrees of people convicted of terrorism. In the explanatory statement for … The initiative, which ABC was able to access, was denounced by popular people: “There is a political strategy of the current government of President Sánchez, based on the need to obtain Beldo’s support, which is to grant prison benefits to ETA prisoners.”
To correct this supposed preferential treatment, the Paris Protocol proposes two simple changes to Article 72 of the LOGP to amend the requirements for designation or progression of terrorists. According to the common interpretation, the current wording of Section VI of this principle leaves it to “interpretation” to decide whether or not it is appropriate for a prisoner to advance in grade, with the consequent access to prison benefits. So far, Article 72.6 of the LOGP only refers to progression to third grade and links it to active cooperation “with the authorities”. The Public Prosecution Office intends to apply this rule to second- and third-degree classification and for this active cooperation to take place “with the police and judicial authorities.”
Until now, in order to move to the third level, where prisoners must go to prison only to sleep, clear signs of abandonment of their terrorist goals and means and active cooperation with the “authorities” are needed, without further details. This allows, according to Parliament’s reading, benefits to be granted to ETA members “disguised under the guise of legality”. Under section 100.2 of the Prison Regulations, the Prison Treatment Board can also propose the adoption of a sentence delivery model that combines different aspects of grading. “This article has been used by the current Ministry so that, despite the danger posed by a prisoner convicted of blood crimes (…), he can obtain authorizations with a simple letter of pardon to the victims, for example, or with any other premeditated gesture,” the People’s Party denounces in its law.
For all this, the Popular Party proposes that the cooperation required of the prisoner be with “the security and judicial authorities,” and they add a seventh section to Article 72 so that combining aspects of different degrees requires the approval of the “competent probation judge,” and they cancel Article 100.2 of the Royal Order because the prison regulations have been approved. In other words, the People’s Party wants the police and judicial authorities to have the final say and not a simple report from the penitentiary institutions, which are organically dependent on the Ministry of the Interior, and therefore on the government.
This Wednesday, the consideration of the law is being discussed, but although its approval is guaranteed in the Senate, where the People’s Party has an absolute majority, it is likely to end up like the rest of the regulations approved by the Senate of this legislature: blocked in Congress by the systematic extension in the schedule of the deadline for registering amendments.