Two have already appeared at the National Court but the other three defendants await France’s response
MADRID, 19 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The family of the PP councilor Gregorio Ordóñez, assassinated on January 23, 1995 in San Sebastián, have asked the judge of the National High Court to check the status of the arrest and surrender orders (OED) issued six years ago to determine if It is possible to question the three former ETA chiefs pending testimony for these acts as defendants: Julián Achurra Egurola, alias ‘Pototo’; José Javier Arizcuren Ruiz, ‘Kantauri’; and Juan Luis Aguirre Lete, ‘Insuntza’.
In a letter, to which Europa Press has had access, Ordóñez’s widow and son ask the person in charge of the Central Court of Instruction Number 1, Alejandro Abascal, to “give impetus to this matter, arranging whatever is necessary to know the state of the OEDs delivered in their day”, to find out if France has given its approval and it is possible to interrogate ‘Pototo’, ‘Kantauri’ and Insuntza’ for these facts.
The private prosecution recalls that the same court issued an OED to France in May 2016 in order to be able to take statements from those three former ETA chiefs and Ignacio Gracia Arregui, alias ‘Iñaki de Rentería’, who was later joined by Mikel Albisu, ‘Mikel Antza’.
At the end of 2021, the Dignity and Justice Association (DyJ) asked Abascal to summon ‘Iñaki de Rentería’ and ‘Mikel Antza’ because both were in Spain having “voluntarily” exceeded the 45 days of stay in the national territory, which made it possible to proceed in this way.
The instructor first cited ‘Mikel Antza’, who on December 21, 2021 denied his participation in the events and attributed the evidence against him to alleged torture of Basque prisoners; to then call ‘Iñaki de Rentería’, who on February 21 only spoke to deny his involvement as the intellectual author of the Ordóñez murder.
The family of the murdered councilor is aware that in these six years the AN has agreed to investigate the response of the French authorities, but argues that it is requesting it again because “this investigation procedure has not finished being carried out, so it continues without to know what the status of those OEDs issued in their day is,” and there is even the possibility that these three ETA members are in the same situation as Albisu Iriarte and Gracia Arregui, he points out.
The National Court has already sentenced Juan Ramón Carasatorre, nicknamed ‘Jon’ and ‘Zapata’; Javier García Gaztelu, ‘Txapote’; and Valentín Lasarte as material authors of the attack committed against the Basque councilor, who was shot when he was having lunch in a bar in the capital of San Sebastian with the then secretary of the Popular Group, María San Gil, and two other collaborators.
The investigation of this attack was resumed in 2015, when the facts were close to statute of limitations, at the request of a complaint filed by Consuelo Ordóñez, the sister of the assassinated councilor and current president of the Collective of Victims of Terrorism (Covite), to identify herself. and judge the ‘masterminds’ of this crime.
The intelligence reports prepared by the Civil Guard then allowed the previous head of said court, Santiago Pedraz, to attribute the intellectual authorship to ‘Iñaki de Rentería’, ‘Mikel Antza’, ‘Pototo’, ‘Kantauri’ and ‘Insuntza’.
