News

The European Court of Human Rights ruled on Tuesday that Spain did not act in violation of the European Convention of Human Rights for the way in which it tried the five men charged with the kidnap and murder of suspected ETA members José Antonio Lasa and José Ignacio Zabala, who were acting under orders from the GAL.

According to the court, in 1981 Lasa and Zabala, both 18 years old, belonged to an ETA commando known as Gorki. In the same year they managed to avoid arrest following a bank raid during which they escaped to France where, at the time, ETA members had immunity.

In 1983, both men were kidnapped in the French Basque town of Bayonne by members of the GAL, an illegal death squad formed by members of the then government to fight ETA. Lasa and Zabala were subsequently taken to a police station in San Sebastian and later sent to Alicante where they were killed and buried in quick lime by civil guards.

A court in Strasbourg jointly examined three appeals presented in 2003 by the ex-civil guards involved in the crime, respectively: Ángel Vaquero, Enrique Dorado and Felipe Bayo; ex-Civil Guard general Enrique Rodríguez Galindo; and Julen Elgorriaga, who were sentences to spend terms of between 67 years and 8 months and 71 years in prison.

The Third Chamber of the Strasbourg Court ruled that Spain did not violated articles 6.1 (right to a fair trial), 6.2 (presumption of innocence) and 6.3 (right to a defence) of the European Convention Human Rights.

All five applicants alleged in their appeals that they were "victims of a violation of the presumption of innocence and the right to a defence."

Furthermore, the first three claimed that "the trial judge had refused, by a reasoned decision not to accept the proposed proofs".