The Supreme Court has once again dealt a setback to the National Court. On June 24, the magistrates annulled the acquittal of two ETA members for the murder of two civil guards in 1986, while yesterday the High Court probably repeated the trial against 'Anboto', accused of twenty frustrated murders, another of attack against authority and a crime of havoc. For the third time in less than a month, the Supreme Court corrects a sentence of the Second Criminal Section of the National High Court.
In this case, the Supreme Court has ordered a repeat sentence against the three ETA members accused of the murder in 1990 of the national policeman Ignacio Pérez Álvarez in Galdácano (Vizcaya), whose attempt to produce through a bomb located on a bicycle next to your vehicle. The accused ETA members –Carmen Guisasola, Oscar Abad and José Ramón Martínez– were acquitted when the statute of limitations was declared. The Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court has annulled said acquittal and has ordered the National High Court to hold a new judicial process with different magistrates "to assess the evidence and issue a sentence according to its result."
"The change of criteria on the prescription made by the Chamber of the National High Court would have deserved a more detailed argumentative justification"
The High Court has admitted the appeal of the Prosecutor's Office, in which the existence of three resolutions is recognized, by the same Chamber and the same rapporteur of the National Court, with different results. In the first two, the extinction of the criminal responsibility of the ETA members derived from the prescription was rescheduled, for which the follow-up of the actions for the prosecution of the accused was ordered. However, in the third resolution, the magistrates decide to acquit the defendants and members of ETA, admitting the defense argument that the imputed crimes had prescribed.
The prosecutor maintains that the Chamber changed its position "omitting any argument or reasonable justification about it". Likewise, the sentence includes a dissenting opinion of Judge Leopoldo Puente, who agrees with the Supreme Court on the sustainability that "the change of criteria on the prescription carried out by the National Court Chamber would have deserved a more detailed argumentative justification."
unjustified prescription
In the judgment of the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court, the need to continue with the investigation of the accused themselves was argued. The magistrates consider that the error of the National High Court comes from not attributing "interruptive effects of the prescription" to the request made by the Public Prosecutor's Office in 1993, three years after the attack, requesting a ballistic comparison analysis of the weapons that were intercepted from the 'Txalaparta' commando –formed among others by the accused: Carmen Guisasola, Oscar Abad and José Ramón Martínez–.
Said interruption is typical of those resolutions "called to activate a procedure that, do not forget, sought to clarify a criminal act attributed to the terrorist organization ETA," the sentence states. Likewise, in 1993 only Abad and Martínez were accused, who recognized Guisasola's participation in the attack, determined yet another reason against the statute of limitations.
Between the prosecutor's request, through an order issued by the Central Court of Instruction number 5, and its fulfillment, more than 10 years passed, an "absolutely unacceptable" time for the High Court. However, that period of time "was not enough to cause the extinguishing effect of criminal liability," defends the Supreme Court.
