Judge María Tardón reactivated a trial against ETA Ainhoa Múgica (alias Olga) for an attack that occurred 23 years ago.
The judge made this decision after realizing, by chance, that this ETA leader was at the National Court, a few floors below her office. The terrorist was attending a trial, for various events, in which she was accused.
In fact, on November 6, Múgica was tried for the assassination of the advisor of the Popular Union of Navarro (UPN), José Javier Múgica Astibia, which occurred in 2001. In court, he admitted to having ordered this deadly attack.
The same day, upon arriving in the morning at the National Court, Tardón, president of the Central Court of Instruction number 3, was unaware of the presence of Olga at the courthouse. But he discovered that ETA was waiting in the corridors leading to the courtrooms.
The judge then decided to reactivate legal proceedings against her, which had been filed years ago, because the Spanish authorities, due to an error, had not been informed of the authorization that France had granted them to initiate criminal proceedings against Múgica.
The chronology of this case is as follows. In 2004, the same Central Investigation Court 3, headed by Judge María Teresa Palacios, prosecuted Ainhoa Múgica and four other ETA members for an alleged crime of attempted terrorist assassination, committed when Olga He was responsible for ETA’s military apparatus.
More precisely, these events occurred in 2002, the same year the procedure began. That year, shortly after the attack, French authorities arrested Múgica on their territory.
According to a judicial resolution dated more than two decades ago, now consulted by EL ESPAÑOL, the Txirrita orderin the order of Olgaplace explosives in a car parked in front of a Repsol headquarters.
No one was killed in the attack. Several Civil Guard officers were injured and various material damage was reported.
In this 2004 resolution, Judge Palacios also issued a European Arrest and Surrender Order (EADO) so that some of the accused could be located abroad, placed in prison and handed over to Spain.
Already in 2007, the same Central Court of Instruction number 3, when the current Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, was its president, had requested that France be able to prosecute Ainhoa Múgica for this attack committed in Madrid.
The French country authorized the request, but His decision was never notified to the Spanish authorities.. It is for this reason that the file against this ETA leader has been provisionally archived.
However, more than a decade and a half after the dismissal, on November 6, after being informed that the ETA member was before the National Court, Tardón reopened this procedure.
She did so after consulting the current liaison magistrate in France, who informed her that the Spanish request to prosecute her had been authorized years ago by French authorities, although it had not been properly notified.
The file was thus reactivated. Tardón has already asked prosecutor José Perals if the proceedings against him should continue. Olga.
Today, the National Court received (and translated) the documentation in which the French authorities accepted the surrender of the terrorist to stand trial for the Madrid attack.
In 2007, after Marlaska made her request, ETA member took advantage of the principle of specialtyaccording to which The Member State of the European Union – in this case Spain – which wishes to prosecute or sentence a person for a crime other than that which led to their surrender by another State – France – must obtain the consent of the latter for these new criminal acts.
Currently, Ainhoa Múgica is detained in Logroño prison. However, when she presented herself at the National Court to be tried for the murder of the UPN advisor, she had what is known as self-governmenta guarantee by which the prison allows him to leave the center and only have to return to sleep, in order to avoid a transfer to a prison in Madrid.
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