National Court Judge Santiago Pedraz issued a European Arrest and Extradition Order (OEDE). com. euroorder) against José Antonio Uroticotxea Bengoetxea, Josue Ternerathe last major leader of ETA and is currently under surveillance in France awaiting trial in that country. The order, dated last Wednesday and seen by El Pais, details that the request was made in one of the two cases still open against Ternera in the National Court, that of the alleged financing of the terrorist organization through… Herico bars (Buildings attended by left-wing sympathizers abertzale extremist).
The decision is based on a Civil Guard report prepared in 2021 on the content of the electronic equipment seized with the former ETA leader when he was arrested on May 16, 2019 in the French town of Salonches at the foot of the Alps. After learning of this police document, the Public Prosecutor’s Office requested last July to expand the trial of Oroticotexia in the case for a new crime, which is managing a terrorist organization or group, considering that it confirmed that the leader of ETA gave orders within the organization until announcing its dissolution on May 3, 2018, seven years after the end of the attacks. Urrutikoetxea’s defense intercepted. Another executive order had already been issued against Ternera in the same case, in addition to the extradition order for the attack on the Zaragoza barracks.
The judge now details in his order that from the documents recovered from the 14 computers found in Ternera’s possession upon his arrest, he concluded that “the person investigated, from his escape from Spain in 2002 until his arrest, was acting as one of the senior leaders of the terrorist group ETA. The possession of the documents, the possession of which was within the reach of a very small and limited number of ETA members, who must be considered at the time, cannot be explained in any other way. “It is understood that he intervened on behalf of the organization in the meetings with representatives of the Spanish government, and it cannot be interpreted in any other way, namely, that he was the person called to announce the dissolution of the organization on behalf of ETA.”
The Civil Guard report specifically included the discovery of a copy of the so-called BKO (Basque abbreviation for general internal communications), which was supposedly prepared to inform a few members of the administration of the outcome of the vote in consultation with the militants on the solution. Counter-terrorism experts stressed that copies of this internal ETA publication had only been seized on three previous occasions and always from “important leaders” of the gang. It also highlighted that the former head of ETA had an intercepted file containing data included in the bulletin in which the process followed to determine “the future and the chosen path of the terrorist organization itself” was recorded.
Researchers found the April 2018 issue of Zotabethe last in this publication, is a document addressed to all activists in the ETA movement explaining the reasons that prompted them to open the debate on the “end of the cycle” of ETA. In this document, the organization acknowledged carrying out 2,606 attacks, including two attacks for which it never claimed responsibility. The agents also focused on some audio recordings with some stories told in Basque that Urrutikoetxea recorded to send to his young daughter. The analysis carried out by the Criminal Investigation Department of the Armed Institute of this file – which compared it with audio recordings of Josue Ternera obtained from his public appearances – concluded, without a doubt and as has always been noted, that it was Orotikotxia who read the announcement of the band’s dissolution in 2018.
After his arrest in France six and a half years ago, Ternera was imprisoned, but at the end of July 2020, a Paris judge ordered his release with a remote monitoring bracelet and the obligation to reside in the French capital. After 11 months, the French judicial system relaxed these measures and allowed him to move to the French city of Anglet (Atlantic Pyrenees region), where his partner and daughter lived, leaving the only precautionary measure to come three times a week to the police station closest to his new home. Currently, you only need to do this once a month, legal sources explain.
Currently, Ternera has a case pending in France in which he is charged with the crime of joining criminals for terrorist purposes – equivalent to the crime of joining a terrorist organization in the Spanish Penal Code – due to his alleged membership in ETA between 2002 and 2005. Orotikotxea was sentenced in absentia in 2010 to seven years in prison for these actions, but the former ETA leader appealed against him after his arrest and the Paris Court of Appeal agreed with him. She ordered that the summary be returned to the investigating judge so that the whole process could begin again, considering that the judicial investigations were marred by “simple preliminary investigations” and an “irregular” final arrest order.
In Spain, the judicial scene is more complex. When he was arrested in 2019, the National Court demanded his extradition in four warrants. Of them, only two came forward against him. One relates to the attack on the Zaragoza barracks in 1987, which left 11 dead (including six minors and two pregnant women) and 88 injured, and for which the Public Prosecutor’s Office is demanding a 2,354-year prison term as an alleged member of the ETA command that ordered the placement of the car bomb that caused that massacre. The other is that Herico barsThis is the case in which Judge Pedraz issued the new European order against the former president of ETA.