The doctrine presented by DyJ would allow 430 terrorist murders to be considered imprescriptible, including those of 11-M
MADRID, 27 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Association of Victims of 11-M has asked to appear in the ‘Miguel Ángel Blanco case’, which is being investigated in the National Court, due to the “legal significance” it has for “all victims of terrorism in Spain”, due to the path open towards the possibility of considering 430 terrorist murders to be imprescriptible, including the jihadist attacks of 2004.
In a letter from last Friday, to which Europa Press has had access, the attorney Elena Llarena, representing the Association of Victims of 11-M, requests the Central Investigating Court Number 6 to allow her to act as popular accusation in the investigation into the kidnapping and subsequent murder of the young PP councilor in Ermua in July 1997 at the hands of ETA.
The Association of Victims of 11-M explains that it wants to appear after having had “public knowledge that in this summary they would be elucidating unique issues and of very unique legal significance, unprecedented, for all the victims of terrorism in Spain, and also, in particular, for the victims of the terrorist attacks of March 11, 2004”.
Legal sources consulted by Europa Press specify that this movement is due to a recent resolution of the Criminal Chamber of the National Court in which it opens the door to declare the imprescriptibility of 430 terrorist murders based on the so-called ‘Miguel Ángel Blanco doctrine ‘.
This doctrine, devised by the Dignity and Justice (DyJ) lawyer, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez Arias, implies considering that all terrorist murders that would not have prescribed when Spain declared said crime imprescriptible can never expire.
Spain introduced the imprescriptibility of terrorist murders in article 131.3 of the Penal Code (CP) through an organic law of December 23, 2010, until then the general expiration period for these crimes was 20 years.
For this reason, Rodríguez Arias believes that it is possible to go back those 20 years from 2010 to consider all the terrorist murders committed since December 24, 1990 to be imprescriptible.
The internationalist expert relies on the 1974 European Convention on Imprescriptibility (CEI), but in force since 2003, which declares the non-prescription of war crimes, crimes against humanity and “other conduct of a comparable nature” to which the State want to give such a category.
In its article 2.2, it establishes that when the Member State in question (Spain) incorporates the agreement into its internal legal system, it must apply it to all crimes that have such consideration, including those that have been committed before, provided that their limitation period is still open. .
According to Rodríguez Arias’s calculations, this would affect 198 murders perpetrated by ETA, 225 by jihadists –including those of 11-M–, five by GRAPO and two by the IRA.
The National Court ruled for the first time on the “Miguel Ángel Blanco doctrine” in the order where the Criminal Chamber supported the decision of Judge Manuel García Castellón to keep Ignacio Miguel Gracia Arregui, alias “Iñaki de Rentería”, charged with consider that it was not yet the opportune procedural moment to clarify whether the crimes had prescribed for this former ETA chief, emphasizing that such a decision corresponds to the court that will judge the case in due course.
“The initial premise with which we find ourselves is the one related to the prescription or not of the facts, on the basis of the application or not to the present case of the convention on the imprescriptibility of war crimes and crimes against humanity of 1968, and especially, of the European agreement on the non-applicability of the statute of limitations to crimes against humanity and war crimes of 1974”, established the Criminal Chamber.
The magistrates left the door open to apply the aforementioned doctrine inasmuch as they pointed out that, “apart from the procedural doubts exposed, others of a normative nature related to the imprescriptibility of terrorist crimes also arise”, due to the aforementioned European convention.
And “this without taking into account the Recommendations of the European Parliament of March 4, 2022, which in relation to the unsolved murders attributed to the terrorist organization ETA, alluded to their consideration as crimes against Humanity, including those prior to the year 2004 and which, therefore, must be considered as imprescriptible and not amnestiable”, they added.
Thus, they indicated that “there are conflicting positions both in criminal and procedural doctrine”, stating that, “although the rejection of the reopening of statutes of limitations that have already expired is evident (what is called in the doctrine the great retroactivity) on the basis of article 9.3 of the Constitution, the same does not happen with the cases in which that had not been reached at the time of the entry into force of the norm, as in the present case”.
It should be remembered that the National Court resumed the investigations into the kidnapping and murder of Miguel Ángel Blanco last March as a result of a complaint in which DyJ asked to also investigate the alleged responsibility of the ETA leadership. In 2006, the judicial headquarters already sentenced the former ETA leader Francisco Javier García Gaztelu, ‘Txapote’, and his sentimental partner and member of ETA Irantzu Gallastegui Sodupe, ‘Amaia’, to 50 years in prison, as material authors.
