The US military operation on January 3 to detain and remove then-president Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela has triggered a political transition in the South American country that the Spanish judiciary wants to take advantage of. The judge of the National Court Francisco de Jorge has issued a letter rogatory (request for judicial assistance) to the authorities in Caracas to provide information about 14 ETA members on the run who are allegedly taking refuge in its territory, including Iñaki de Juana Chaos.
In his ruling, dated May 19 and accessed by EL PAÍS, the magistrate states that he made this decision considering that the “recent political change in Venezuela” — clearly referring to the arrival of Delcy Rodríguez to the Presidency after Maduro’s fall — “allows inferring cooperation” from the South American country’s authorities to locate this group of ETA members. The judge adds that some ETA members have “pending judicial claims” for attacks from the early years of democracy. Until now, Venezuela has rejected cooperation requests, mainly extradition, arguing that the ETA members wanted by Spain are in the country protected by a bilateral agreement from the 1980s.
Besides De Juana, the judge requests the Venezuelan judicial authorities “all information they have” on José Luis Eciolaza Galán, alias Dienteputo; Eugenio Barrutiabengoa Zabarte, Arbe, and his partner, María Artola Echeverría; Ángel María Lizarbe Oses, Luis María Olalde Quintela, Txistu; José Ángel Uriz Zabaleta, Arturo Cubillas Fontan, Javier Urruti Imaz, Asunción Arana Altuna, Olivia; Juan José Aristizábal Cortejarena, Manuel Asier Guridi Zaloña, Gari; Jesús María Huerta Fernández and Ignacio Echevarría Lanzábal. The magistrate aims “to determine the involvement of the mentioned persons in the crime of integration into a terrorist organization” within a case opened in 2024 about the self-styled Basque Political Refugees Collective (EIPK in Basque), in which seven other people have been charged for a year.
The judge notes that these ETA members allegedly sheltered in Venezuela appear cited in a Civil Guard report from last September 25 linking them to the EIPK, a body that the armed institute places as subordinate to the political apparatus of the extinct terrorist organization and which it used to “monitor” ETA members settled in third countries and provide them with “legal and economic assistance,” as well as to subject them to “control,” according to the magistrate’s details. The judge clarifies that he aims to know the “degree of responsibility within this collective” of each of the 14 in an investigation partly based on the so-called ETA archive, more than 40,000 paper documents and hundreds of terabytes in digital format seized from armed group members between 1999 and 2010 in France and sent by Paris to Spain in 2018.
The order includes a second letter rogatory, this time directed to the US, where the former head of Venezuelan military counterintelligence, ex-general Hugo Armando Carvajal, El Pollo, is imprisoned for drug trafficking, extradited to US justice by Spain in July 2023 after being arrested in Madrid. The judge asks Washington authorities to provide “all documentation or information found in the judicial procedure” against the former Venezuelan military officer “about the members of the ETA terrorist organization on the run from Spanish justice residing in Venezuela.” He also requests to take his statement as a witness, for which he announces he would send a “list of questions” if they agree to cooperate.
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The judge concludes that Carvajal’s statement may serve to support the data that Caracas might provide. During his stay in Spain and to avoid his extradition to the United States, the ex-military claimed to have information about the whereabouts in Venezuela of alleged ETA members protected by the Maduro regime and even offered a supposed report containing data on 17 of them, 10 of whom are now cited in Judge De Jorge’s order.
Request from the victims’ association
The judge has agreed to issue both letters rogatory — opposed by the Prosecutor’s Office as unnecessary — at the request of the victims’ association Dignity and Justice (DyJ), involved in this case as a popular accusation. In its document, dated January weeks after Maduro’s fall, DyJ argued that Venezuela is “one of the countries where one of the largest colonies of ETA members” on the run from Spanish justice is located. According to the latest report from the National Security Department, security forces estimate 23 ETA members wanted “located in different countries,” including the South American country alongside Brazil, Cape Verde, Cuba, France, Mexico, and Uruguay. Photographs of some of them appear on the list of most wanted persons that the Civil Guard has on its website.
The victims’ association stated in its document that “it is notorious and known” that during the mandates of Hugo Chávez and Maduro “ETA members who fled to Venezuela have enjoyed protection from the Caribbean country’s authorities, making it impossible to bring them before Spanish justice to answer for their terrorist crimes.” DyJ added that this has resulted in Caracas refusing to attend “the multiple extradition requests that, in the last 25 years, have been made by Spanish judicial authorities, repeatedly denying cooperation in such deliveries.” This attitude, the association emphasizes, has prevented “them from being tried, with many of the crimes they were accused of having expired.”
The association itself pointed out in its document that Maduro’s fall invites “considering the change in the political situation in Venezuela” as a trigger for a hypothetical change by Caracas authorities that leads them to “cooperate with Spain in delivering all information they have regarding these members of the ETA terrorist organization” or “any other not mentioned” in the document who might reside in the country. If the Venezuelan judicial authorities finally provide the requested data, DyJ hopes that subsequently the government of Delcy Rodríguez agrees to the “delivery and availability to Spanish justice” of the 14 ETA members.
