García Castellón insists that he does not consider the murder of Miguel Ángel Blanco prescribed and agrees to also act against ‘Iñaki de Rentería’
The judge of the National High Court Manuel García Castellón announces that he is not willing to throw in the towel and that he is going to continue, at least for the moment, with his investigation against the former heads of ETA for the murder of Miguel Ángel Blanco despite doubts of the State Attorney General’s Office, which believes that this crime could be prescribed.
Moreover, García Castellón, in an order dated this Thursday and to which this newspaper has had access, after several appeals, agrees to rectify himself and resolves that “there is no place to declare the prescription of the crimes imputed to Ignacio Gracia Arregi », ‘Iñaki de Rentería’, whom he had left out of this case last July while accusing former terrorist leaders José Javier Arizkuren Ruiz, «Kantauri» of the kidnapping and murder of the PP councilor in Ermua; Miguel Albisu Iriarte, “Mikel Antza”, and María Soledad Iparraguire, “Anboto”.
“We must underline that this judicial body assumes that the crime is not prescribed,” insists García Castellón, who nevertheless recognizes that this issue is very glassy and that “there are legal discrepancies regarding the calculation of the prescription, its interruption and its applicability to each and every one of the subjects to whom a participation in the facts is attributed. Moreover, the instructor already predicts that this issue, before a hypothetical trial, will end up in the Criminal Chamber of the National High Court, since “we are not facing a diaphanous issue, but rather it presents legal nuances of high technical complexity. ».
controversial doctrine
The head of the Central Court of Instruction 6 of the National Court reopened last March the summary on the murder of the councilor at the request of the Dignity and Justice association, which presented García Castellón with the so-called “Miguel Ángel Blanco doctrine”, which makes a new interpretation of the European Convention on the Imprescriptibility of Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes, which would allow 430 terrorist murders committed in Spain or against Spanish citizens between 1990 and 2010 to be declared imprescriptible forever.
According to this novel doctrine, when the Government of Rodríguez Zapatero reformed the Penal Code, it did so without considering that article 2.2 of the 1974 European Convention on the Imprescriptibility of Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes required the member countries of the Council of Europe to apply the non-prescription also in cases in which the term for the legal file “had not expired at that time”.
Thus, the limit of the imprescriptibility of terrorist attacks would not be marked by that December 2010 in which the reform of the Penal Code came into force. And yes, on December 24, 1990, 20 years earlier; that is, the ordinary Spanish prescription for terrorist murders in force at the time.
This doctrine, which will end up being examined by the Criminal Chamber and very probably also by the Supreme, defends that the entry into force of the reform of the Criminal Code in 2010 determined that in all the previous terrorist murders, and whose term of prescription of 20 years had not yet been closed, it became, simply, “extended” or “extended”. That is to say, in no case is there a retroactive application of a rule unfavorable to the accused (prohibited by law), since they were persecution terms that were still open. What was extended was, only, “the period of criminal prosecution by the State.”
Change of criteria
Initially, the Public Ministry welcomed this doctrine promoted by Dignity and Justice. However, last July, surprisingly, he decided not to accuse the former terrorist chiefs in this summary when considering the prescribed facts, while denying that it was a political decision promoted by the new State Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz .
García Ortiz himself promised on July 28, during his appearance in the Justice Commission of the Congress of Deputies to defend his appointment, to raise the issue of the prescription or not to the Board of Prosecutors of the Chamber, after differences of opinion arose between the then prosecutor in the case, Vicente González Mota, and his colleagues from the National High Court. However, this Board has not yet addressed this point.
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