The judge of the National High Court Alejandro Abascal has summoned the historical leader of ETA Mikel Albisu Iriarte, alias, to testify this Monday as the accused for December 21 Mikel Antza, for his alleged participation in the decision to assassinate, on January 23, 1995, the deputy mayor of San Sebastián, the leader of the Basque PP Gregorio Ordóñez. The magistrate authorizes Antza to appear by videoconference from the courts of the Donostia capital, where the former ETA leader has resided since he was expelled by France in 2019. Since that year, the former ETA leader has been free as there is no legal case in Spain against he.
It is not the first time since then that the Spanish justice has tried to question Antza for this murder. In June 2020, magistrate Santiago Pedraz, then at the head of the court in which the indictment for the death of the PP politician is instructed, already summoned him to testify, but then it could not be made effective.
Antza’s imputation starts in November 2015, when Judge Pedraz admitted to processing the complaint of Consuelo Ordóñez, sister of the PP politician, against him and four other ETA members who, when the attack was committed, were part of the so-called executive committee of the band. The main argument was a report from the Civil Guard that, according to the magistrate, provided “reliable and credible indications of the participation of the accused in the decision to kill Gregorio Ordóñez.”
In that order, the judge highlighted that ETA acted with “a hierarchy based on a rigid discipline” in which its executive committee “assumes all managerial functions so that there is nothing that this leadership does not control, promote or direct.” In this sense, the magistrate pointed out that the terrorists who assumed the leadership of the gang after the fall in 1992 of the former ETA leadership in Bidart (France) launched a strategy that included attacking politicians from the PP and the PSOE to “ destabilize the State ”.
For all these reasons, the magistrate accepted the complaint and considered the five ETA leaders investigated. Regarding Antza, who was then serving a sentence in France, the order indicated that he was part of the ETA leadership “between mid-1994, when he took responsibility for the political apparatus, and on October 3, 2004, the date of his arrest” and, therefore , when it was decided to “act against Ordóñez.”
Mikel Antza had fled to France in July 1985 after taking part in the escape from the San Sebastian prison of Martutene of the ETA members Joseba Sarrionaindia and Ignacio Pikabea, during the celebration of a concert by the singer Imanol. Since then, experts in the fight against terrorism have placed him close to the leadership of the terrorist organization, with increasing decision-making power. In fact, he was present at the meeting that the armed gang held in 1999 with envoys from the Government of José María Aznar in Zurich (Switzerland) during one of the organization’s truces.
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Antza maintained this prominent role until he was arrested, on October 3, 2004, in the town of Salies de Bearn, in the south of France, in a macro-network that resulted in the arrest of 28 people on both sides of the border. and the dismantling of five weapons depots with more than 1,100 kilos of explosives and two surface-to-air missiles, as well as submachine guns, pistols, revolvers, ammunition and detonators. His partner, Soledad Iparragirre, Anboto, was also arrested in that operation. She was extradited to Spain after serving a sentence in France and has already been sentenced by the National High Court for her involvement in several attacks and remains in prison.
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