SPAIN: Security Sackings follow Mistreatment of Basque Separatist

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

MADRID, Mar 17 1997 (IPS) - The mistreatment of a member of the Basque separatist organisation ETA detained for murder led to the sacking of two high-ranking security personnel in the Basque city of San Sebastian, Northeast Spain, Monday.

Interior Minister Jaime Mayor Oreja, born and bred in San Sebastian ousted his representative there, Angel Goya, and the provincial chief of police, Emilio Monge.

Goya was removed for his political responsibility and Monge for being directly responsible for covering up the injuries suffered by ETA member Fernando Elejalde at the hands of the police, and for ordering the interrogation to continue regardless.

Ejalde, and two other ETA members who escaped, shot dead Javier Gomez Elosegui, psychologist in the Martutene prison, on Mar. 11 in a public street in San Sebastian. He admitted his guilt before the judge.

Gomez Elosegui was a LAB union member, a moderate nationalist who agreed with transferring the Basque prisoners to prisons near the Basque country – a persistent demand of the independence fighters of the region.

Two off-duty policemen, who were drinking coffee in a nearby bar, persued the assailants, and after a struggle, managed to detain Ejalde.

The case is being heard by Judge Javier Gomez de Liano, famous for his trial of the offenders in the “dirty war” against the Basque separatists organised from the Interior Ministry between 1983 and 1986 under the Socialist government of Felipe Gonzalez.

Gomez de Liano said Monday that Ejalde was neither tortured nor beaten during his detention in the San Sebastian police station, according to three medical reports – the first carried out two hours after his arrest, the second, on Thursday and the third, Friday, when the accused was taken to Madrid.

The injuries were received in the chase, when he was hit by a car, and during the struggle when the two policemen captured him. Witnesses quoted in Spanish daily ‘El Pais’ said the two officers “beat Ejalde with punches and kicks, until he stopped moving.”

However, what is now under discussion is what happened afterwards. Pedro J. Ramirez, director of another daily ‘El Mundo’ and personal friend of the President, Jose Maria Aznar, said “interrogating an indivudual with the level of injuries indicated for more than 50 hours in the police station…is an offence of mistreatment.”

Monge, who is classed as a “tough policeman,” was told of the condition of the prisoner on Tuesday morning, and he ordered the man be taken to the police station and not the hospital.

Furthermore, he did not inform the ministry of the situation and later on, even rejected the criticism saying “God help the politicians of the Interior (ministry) if they start to interfere in the antiterrorist framework.”

However, Mayor Oreja decided to interfere, starting by ousting Monge, convinced that all action against the ETA violence and similar organisations must be handled within a scrupulous respect for the law and human rights.

Major Oreja is firmly supported by public opinion, even within the Basque country. His handling of the situation was classed as very good by 11.7 percent of people in this region by the Sigma- Dos company after the arrest of Ejalde.

A further 24.7 percent of those surveyed classed it as “good,” 29.1 percent as satisfactory, 10.3 as bad, and 5.7 percent as very bad.