Madrid (EFE).- Penitentiary Institutions agreed this Friday to transfer five ETA members to prisons in the Basque Country, the last inmates of the terrorist group who remained far from Euskadi and Navarra, according to the Association of Victims of Terrorism (AVT).
After learning of the Prisons’ decision, the AVT has concluded the dispersal policy and figures at 164 inmates who are already in one of the three Basque prisons, while another 11 are inmates in centers in Navarra.
The only ETA prisoner who sleeps outside the Basque Country and Navarra is Natividad Jauregi, who is in the Alcalá de Henares prison (Madrid) awaiting to appear in a trial at the National Court for a pending case.
Before this latest batch of transfers, seven prisoners were pending in prisons dependent on the central administration, but one of them, Sebasten Jon Gurtabay, was released last weekend and Natividad Jauregi herself.
Gallastegui, author of the murders of Miguel Ángel Blanco and Fernando Múgica
Asier Borrero is serving a six-year prison sentence for manufacturing and placing a barrel of bomb beer in 2008 that was hidden in a street in Getxo (Vizcaya), and which several Ertzaintza agents managed to deactivate.
He will serve three quarters of his sentence in August 2023 and, following the proposal of the Treatment Board of the Cantabrian prison in which he was held, the inmate was initially classified in second degree and in a prison in the Basque Country, according to Interior has reported.
The ETA member Irantzu Gallastegui Sodupe, Amaia, will be transferred from the Madrid prison of Estremera to the Basque Country to serve a cumulative sentence of 30 years for murders, terrorist kidnapping, possession of explosives and havoc.
Gallastegui, who is a partner of the former ETA leader Francisco Javier García Gaztelu, Txapote, was convicted as the author of the murder of the Ermua PP councilor Miguel Ángel Blanco, and for other murders such as that of the Basque socialist Fernando Múgica Herzog or that of the PP councilor in Zarautz José Ignacio Iruretagoyena.
Transfers of ETA members Escudero, Etxeberria and Álvarez
Another transferred prisoner is Gregorio Escudero Balerdi, who will go to a prison in the Basque Country from Dueñas (Palencia) to serve a cumulative sentence of 30 years for the crimes of murder, terrorist homicide and havoc.
Escudero Balerdi was convicted in connection with the shooting murder of Orio socialist councilor Juan Priede in March 2002, and with the murder of PP councilor José Ignacio Iruretagoyena in Zarauz in 1998.
Garikoitz Etxeberria Goikoetxea will also be transferred from Dueñas, where he will serve a cumulative sentence of 20 years for belonging to a terrorist organization, transporting and depositing explosive substances, illegal possession of weapons and counterfeiting.
Etxeberria was sentenced for being part of a commando involved in the possession of 240 kilograms of explosives, which were found in a hideout in Amorebieta and in the Atxondo valley (Vizcaya).
Faustino Marcos Álvarez, who is serving a sentence of 12 years and 14 months for belonging to an armed gang, possession of weapons and counterfeiting, will go to the Basque Country from Daroca prison (Zaragoza).
Marcos Álvarez was arrested on February 15, 2010 when he entered Spain from France by train with nearly 6,000 euros to organize a laboratory for the manufacture of explosives in Catalonia, and was sentenced for this to 12 years in prison.
The AVT accuses the Government of generating “infinite pain”
Upon learning of the transfers of the last ETA members, the AVT has assured in a statement that “the Government of Pedro Sánchez can now definitively affirm that it is responsible for the approach to prisons in the Basque Country and Navarra of 100% of the ETA prisoners” and “The person responsible for having generated infinite and unnecessary pain to the victims of terrorism.”
“In short, the person responsible for materializing what many of us already knew: that this government is with the terrorists, not with their victims,” he concluded.