By Tito Drago
MADRID, Oct 31 2000 (IPS)

Three Argentine human rights organisations expressed their solidarity Tuesday with Spain’s Victims of Terrorism Association and denounced the Monday bombing, blamed on the Basque separatist group ETA, that left three people dead.

The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (Línea Fundadora), Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, and the Association of Families of the Detained-Disappeared in Argentina thus distanced themselves from another Argentine group, also known as Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo – headed by Hebe de Bonafini -, which declared solidarity with the families of imprisoned ETA members.

In an open letter to the ETA prisoners’ families, De Bonafini states that the Spanish government is “an assassin and a criminal.”

The two Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo groups share origins in activities protesting the forced disappearances of their children committed by the most recent Argentine dictatorship (1976-1983), but they later split over discrepancies about their mission.

De Bonafini maintains that the mothers of the disappeared must continue the struggle of their children, and her organisation generally takes a position on major Argentine or international political questions.

Meanwhile, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (Línea Fundadora), Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, and the Association of Families of the Detained-Disappeared (AFDD) focus their activities on denouncing the state terrorism of the Argentine dictatorship and searching for those who were taken from their disappeared parents as young children.

The three organisations sent a letter of solidarity to Spain’s Victims of Terrorism Association, signed by Esperanza y Manoli Labrador on behalf of the Mothers-Línea Fundadora, Matilde Rutilo Artés for the Grandmothers, and Nora Gutiérrez for the AFDD.

“Through the Victims of Terrorism Association, we want to reach each one of the people affected by the latest brutal ETA attack, which we publicly denounce, and express our deepest condolences to the widows, orphans and families,” they write.

The letter was released as protests against Euskadi ta Askatasuna (ETA, Basque Fatherland and Freedom, in the Basque language) took place throughout Spain following the car-bomb attack Monday in Madrid, which killed Supreme Court justice José Francisco Querol Lombardero, his driver, Armando Medina, and bodyguard, Jesús Escudero García.

Another 38 people were injured by the blast, which destroyed dozens of vehicles and caused various levels of damage to at least 50 homes nearby.

De Bonafini affirmed she has no reason to retract what she said in her letter of solidarity to the families of the ETA prisoners, according to an interview published Saturday by the Madrid daily ‘El Mundo.’

“All I did was denounce the State that tortures and holds people prisoner for thinking, and I stand by that,” she said.

“The Spanish State is a terrorist state, (Interior Minister Jaime) Mayor Oreja is a Franco supporter, and the ‘Franquistas’ do not like it when their torturing is revealed.”

“Mayor Oreja is one of the responsible parties because he allows torture to occur, he admits it and is pleased by it,” added De Bonafini.

Rutilo, one of the first grandmothers to recover her disappeared grandchild – whose mother, Rutilo’s daughter, was assassinated by the Argentine dictatorship – told IPS that De Bonafini’s stance and her ties with movements linked to ETA are nothing new.

But this relationship “is harmful to the cause of all mothers, grandmothers and families of the victims of the dictatorship and of terrorism,” stated Rutilo.

According to De Bonafini, in Spain there are ETA prisoners accused of terrorism and others who “are in prison just for thinking.” Spanish government sources assure that her allegations are false and stress that in Spain it is no crime to hold an opinion.

As proof, they point out that former ETA inmates who were found guilty of assassination and served their prison sentences are now serving as legislative deputies, and one is even serving on the Basque Parliament’s Human Rights Commission.

The Victims of Terrorism Association declared De Bonafini “persona non grata” and extended its repudiation to the organisation she heads.

José María Robles Fraga, Foreign Affairs spokesman for the governing Popular Party, accused De Bonafini of being “a swindler who has deceptively won the good faith of the many people and institutions” that provide her group with economic assistance.

The leader of the moderate Basque Nationalist Party, Javier Arzalluz, defended De Bonafini, and stressed that the Spanish government “not only violates incarceration regulations, but truly acts in a heartless way, deliberately distancing mothers and fathers from their children as a punishment beyond that imposed by law.”

Arzalluz referred to the fact that individuals tried and found guilty of ETA assassinations are held in prisons far from the Basque Country, but he did not indicate that these prisoners are victims of torture or physical mistreatment.

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