Spain's anti-terrorism court convicted 47 people on Wednesday of supporting ETA, as judicial authorities maintained pressure on the Basque separatist group six months after it ended a ceasefire.
The court sentenced them to prison terms of between two and 20 years each after Spain's biggest trial linked to ETA, which lasted from November last year to last March.
The 47 belong to various groups accused of links to ETA, blamed for 819 deaths in Spain over the past four decades in its campaign to establish an independent Basque nation in parts of northwestern Spain and southwestern France.
Anti-terrorist judge Baltasar Garzon, who headed the investigation that led to the trial, believes ETA could not have survived without the support of these groups.
A total of 52 people were on trial, but five were found not guilty.
The 47 convicted received a total of more than 500 years in prison for belonging to or collaborating with a "terrorist organization," according to the ruling read by the head of the court, Angela Murillo, and broadcast on national television.
ETA's political wing, Batasuna, immediately condemned the convictions.
The party's most senior official still at large, Pernando Barrena, accused the government of conducting a "witch hunt against the separatist movement" and a "scorched earth policy aimed at destroying bridges," a reference to an aborted peace process.
The government of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero ended peace talks with ETA after it staged a car bombing at Madrid airport last December that killed two people.
ETA formally called off a 15-month-old ceasefire in June, saying the Madrid government had failed to make concessions in the peace process and it would now "act on all fronts" to campaign for an independent Basque state.
Since then, Zapatero, who is facing a general election in March, has adopted a hard line against the group.
Just days after ETA's announcement, the high court confirmed a 15-month prison sentence handed down to Batasuna leader Arnaldo Otegi for "glorifying terrorism."
Then in late October, Garzon ordered the arrest of most of the Batasuna leadership.
From 1998 to 2002, the judge had sought to dismantle various organizations suspected of links to ETA and whose members were convicted on Wednesday.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
CYBERCRIME, TRAFFICKING: A ‘pattern of state failures’ allowed the billion-dollar industry to flourish, including failures to investigate human rights abuses, it said Human rights group Amnesty International yesterday accused Cambodia’s government of “deliberately ignoring” abuses by cybercrime gangs that have trafficked people from across the world, including children, into slavery at brutal scam compounds. The London-based group said in a report that it had identified 53 scam centers and dozens more suspected sites across the country, including in the Southeast Asian nation’s capital, Phnom Penh. The prison-like compounds were ringed by high fences with razor wire, guarded by armed men and staffed by trafficking victims forced to defraud people across the globe, with those inside subjected to punishments including shocks from electric batons, confinement
RSS