The supervisory judge of the Audiencia Nacional, José Luis Castro, revoked this Wednesday the decision of the Basque Government to grant semi-freedom to the former ETA leader María Soledad Iparraguirre Guenechea, alias Anboto, and to the ETA member Juan Ramón Carasatorre, Zapata, convicted for the murder of PP councilor in San Sebastián Gregorio Ordóñez, among other crimes. The Prosecutor’s Office had opposed the semi-freedom of both ETA members. The magistrate’s decision, which is appealable, immediately suspends the Monday to Friday prison exits, to which they only had to return to sleep, since the Department of Justice and Human Rights of the Basque Government, headed by the socialist María Jesús San José, decided to apply article 100.2 of the Penitentiary Regulations to them in March and February respectively. The magistrate uses both orders to raise the need to review the legislation that allows the granting of certain semi-freedoms without prior judicial control.
In the resolution on Anboto, the magistrate highlights that her semi-freedom benefits no one: “It creates false expectations for the inmate and unnecessary unease for the victims, and even for the citizenry, who will find these decisions of release/incarceration strange given the news in the media”. In the case of the former ETA leader, the judge recalls the extreme gravity of the crimes for which she was convicted: 10 murders, possession of explosives, attacks, destruction, arson, possession of weapons, and crimes against the Crown, which have accumulated in a 30-year prison sentence.
