VENEZUELA: Basques Denounce Persecution by Spanish Police

By Humberto Márquez Reprint | | Print |

Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, Feb 26 2003 (IPS) - A group of Basque separatists who describe themselves as political refugees in Venezuela complain that they are being persecuted by the Spanish police, which accuses them of membership in the illegal Basque separatist group ETA. The Basques say they fear they will be apprehended and taken back to Spain without due process.

In Venezuela, ”the decades-old tradition of political asylum has been broken,” said one man during an exclusive IPS interview with the Basque immigrant group.

”In the past eight months, two of our friends, Juan Víctor ‘Bittor’ Galarza and Sebastián Etxaniz Alcorta, were illegally expelled and handed over to authorities in Spain,” he said.

ETA was formed in the 1960s in Spain in opposition to the Francisco Franco dictatorship (1939-1975) and its main objective has been to create an independent Basque state. ETA, (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, Basque Fatherland and Freedom in the Basque language), known for its car bombs and assassinations, is blamed for the deaths of more than 800 people in Spain over the last three decades.

While ETA maintains some support in the Basque Country, and about a quarter of the electorate there supports independence, the Basque people overwhelmingly reject the violent tactics associated with the illegal separatist organisation – 84 percent of respondents, according to a recent poll.

Arturo Cubillas, one of the Basques in Venezuela, filed a complaint with the Office of the People’s Defender (Ombudsman) this week that a man who looked like a police agent and spoke with the distinct accent from Spain, wearing a small earphone, followed him in the Caracas subway to the Office.

”Officials with the People’s Defender brought him into the building, and the individual was initially willing to identify himself, but when he realised it was not a police institution, he escaped. He ran away after scuffling with several witnesses,” Cubillas told IPS.

"My Venezuelan wife Goizeder Odriozola and I are constantly being followed, from our homes and our places of work, by individuals who are watching us, but who are not with the Venezuelan police," said the Basque.

"We fear that further deportations are in the works, and will take place under shady circumstances, as occurred with Galarza and Alcorta," Cubillas said.

In the 1980s, Venezuela received "in bailment" 30 alleged members of ETA through a verbal tripartite agreement amongst the governments of Spain, France and Venezuela.

At the time, the three countries were headed by social democrats: Felipe González of Spain, François Mitterrand of France and Jaime Lusinchi and Carlos Andrés Pérez in Venezuela.

Venezuela took in members of ETA’s so-called ‘Comando de Argel’ after France decided against turning them over to Spain for trial, and instead sending them far from the Iberian Peninsula.

Also finding their way to Venezuela were presumed ETA members who were expelled from other countries or fleeing from Spanish police.

Other Basques sought by Spanish authorities for their alleged ETA membership have sought safe haven in several countries, including Cape Verde, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Mexico, Panama and Uruguay.

Those who chose Panama fled the Central American country in 1989 when the United States invaded and overthrew the government of Manuel Noriega.

Years later, presidents Luis Alberto Lacalle, of Uruguay (1990-1995), Ernesto Zedillo, of Mexico (1994-2000) and Leonel Fernández, of the Dominican Republic (1996-2000), turned over several alleged ETA members to Madrid after the three countries had allowed them to remain for several years.

In the case of Venezuela, the individuals living "in bailment" must check in monthly with the police in whatever city they live in, but the Basques are not officially recognised as refugees.

Some of them still hold Spanish passports, while others lack international documents, and many have been issued Venezuelan identification documents that give them foreign resident status.

These frequent police controls "mean that the watched and the watcher get to know each other very well, and it gives the Basques a basis to distinguish between a Venezuelan counterintelligence agent, a Spanish agent or someone else," a local police officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told IPS.

In 1996, when the social-Christian administration of Rafael Caldera governed Venezuela, agents of the Spanish police and Interpol (International Police) led a furtive attempt to fly alleged ETA member Eugenio Berrutiabengoa out of the country on a private aircraft.

But the Caldera government stepped in and halted the operation – and issued a strong protest against Madrid.

After that incident, Spain went through legal channels to extradite six presumed ETA members who live in Venezuela. The case is now in the hands of Venezuela’s Supreme Court of Justice.

The Prosecutor General’s Office, meanwhile, ordered the preventive detention of the six, who were not part of the group that IPS interviewed.

The detention orders came under fire from the Bai movement (meaning ‘Yes’ in Basque), representing the community of Basque immigrants and their descendants, and from Venezuela’s leading human rights group, Provea. Both charge that the right to asylum has not been duly respected.

Spain has issued assurances that it will await the legal resolution of the matter, but is urging the Venezuelan court to authorise the extraditions as a contribution to international efforts to fight terrorism.

ETA is included on the U.S. State Department’s list of 30 "foreign terrorist organisations".

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who first took office in 1999, says he "inherited the Basque issue" from his predecessors, now part of the political opposition. He insists the matter is now the responsibility of the judiciary.

Galarza, one of the two men the Basque immigrant group says was illegally expelled from Venezuela, faces two charges for assassination in Spain. He was arrested May 31 and handed over to Madrid the next day, in spite of the Ombudsman’s habeas corpus efforts on his behalf.

Two weeks earlier, at the summit meeting of the European Union, Latin America and the Caribbean, in Madrid, Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar had asked for Chávez’s collaboration in fighting terrorism.

Galarza "was interrogated at the DISIP (Venezuelan secret police) headquarters by Spanish agents. One who called himself Francisco Perea was designated by the Spanish Embassy to the Venezuelan anti-drugs council. He offered to not send our friend to Spain if he collaborated, if he would be an informer," said a Basque in the group interviewed by IPS.

Etxaniz, the second of the two cases the group cited, was captured on Dec 16 by DISIP agents, who within a matter of hours turned him over to Spanish agents on an airplane that took him to Madrid, where he faces trial for his alleged participation in 15 ETA assassinations.

"In both instances the police violated the guarantees and due process established by our laws," Patricia Mejía, director of legal services at the Office of the People’s Defender in Caracas, told IPS.

"The police claimed there were immigration problems, but each of the men had a Spanish passport and a visa to remain in Venezuela beyond 2003," she said.

It is unjust "to have human beings ‘in bailment’, keeping them far away as long as they are a problem, but removable on demand," said Mejía, who has advocated normalising the immigrant status of the Basques in this situation.

"We are a juridical implant in Venezuela, and those of us who do not have passports are like citizens of nowhere," commented one of the Basque men interviewed by IPS.

The members of the informal group of Basques agree that any response by the Venezuelan government to extradition or deportation requests must take into account good conduct, which they say is valued in the restaurants, tourism companies and other businesses where many of them work, as well as the fact that they have married Venezuelans and have children born in this South American country.

They also recognise that their situation could be a throwaway issue in the country’s current political upheaval.

Spain is a member of the Group of Friends, countries that are mediating, led by the Organisation of American States, in the stop-and-start talks between the Chávez government and the opposition.

"Aznar, please, each one in his place. Don’t meddle in our business. We don’t meddle in yours," Chávez said last weekend, in response to Spanish foreign minister Ana Palacio’s statement of concern about the fate of an opposition leader arrested by Venezuelan secret police.

Relations between Caracas and Madrid are being tested further by the explosions early Tuesday morning that blew a hole in a wall of the Spanish embassy and the Colombian consulate in Venezuela. No individual or group has claimed responsibility for the blasts.

Spain’s ambassador Manuel Viturro de la Torre, however, assured that the two nations maintain "excellent" ties.