It is the first time he speaks in public. She has remained silent for years. They call José Manuel Gómez Benítez The brave at the Complutense University:
―We have to start winning the story about the end of ETA.
Jurist, former member of the General Council of the Judiciary, in September 2006 he joined the negotiations of the Government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero with the terrorist group ETA by order of Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, vice president of the Executive. This Tuesday, at the Ateneo de Madrid and in collaboration with EL PAÍS, during the conference cycle the end of ETAhas broken his silence before a full auditorium.
Gómez Benítez read to more than a hundred attendees a detailed account written in his own handwriting for 30 minutes, from the first call he received from Rubalcaba that afternoon in August 2006:
―The negotiation is not progressing. ETA is already threatening to kill again. I need to strengthen our delegation.
He has praised the previous months of dialogue between the former president of the Socialist Party of Euskadi between 2002 and 2014, Jesus Eguiguren, and the leader abertzale Arnaldo Otegi. “A political table was agreed between Basque parties and a technical table,” he said. The first was based on the “deepening” of autonomy within the Constitution and the second on the prisoners and the activity of the political arm of ETA, Batasuna. “From the first moment it was clear that there was not going to be talk of independence. It was never discussed. “It was just a matter of discussing the framework of autonomy in the Basque Country.”
What affects the most is what happens closest. So you don't miss anything, subscribe.
Subscribe
In a context in which ETA was weakened from the police point of view, public opinion, also that of the Basque Country, was already showing its fed up with the terrorist group in the opinion of Gómez Benítez. “A minority sector supported ETA, but I am interested in highlighting that, although they were weak, they could continue killing. The police forces told us that an end was not foreseeable in the short and medium term. That they could continue killing and, in fact, they did so as soon as the negotiation broke down [con un atentado con dos víctimas mortales en la T4 del aeropuerto de Barajas el 30 de octubre de 2006]”.
Another obstacle was added to the difficulty of negotiating with terrorists. “Mariano Rajoy maintained an impressive and furious opposition against the negotiation. They took to the street. They called us country-seller. It was difficult to negotiate in those conditions. It seemed that they had forgotten that Aznar had also attempted other negotiations. “That, furthermore, before speaking with ETA he had already approached prisoners.”
Gómez Benítez recalled that the terrorists who sat at those tables were very fanatical. They demanded that, if they did not kill, the Government had to stop their arrests and judicial processes immediately. They demanded that the ceasefire meant a pact of mutual non-aggression. They demanded the temporary suspension of the courts and the rule of law. One terrorist even blurted out:
—The Government can do whatever it wants with the judges. If a judge says this is illegal, the Government says it is legal and the law ends.
He has recognized that one of the keys was the discrepancies between Batasuna and ETA. After the T4 attack, Gómez Benítez was the only negotiator sent by the Government. “Very little is known about these phases,” he said. “This attack took place without ETA having declared the end of the ceasefire and when we had set a date for January 2007. We understood that the possibilities of an agreement were practically non-existent. However, from then on, the priority was to ensure that its political arm ended its dependence on ETA. In our opinion, this would be the beginning of the end for ETA.” There, he has said, a change of power occurred within ETA. Javier López Peña, Thierry, in front of Josu Ternera. “Thierry's tendency to put dead people on the negotiating table was pathological. One day I got fed up and told him that if he did it again we would get up and he would never see our hair again. He didn't expect it. He did not do it again throughout the negotiation until the final moments, in May 2007. Previously, of course, Thierry himself told him:
―Your weapons are prison and torture. Ours are bombs and guns. If something happens to me, you already know what will happen to you.
The also professor at the Complutense University recalled that all ETA negotiators understood killing as an end. “Even the deaths of children, which he described as collateral damage. These people considered their activity as a mixture of work militia and commercial activity. […] If they were warned that they could not collect the revolutionary tax, they said that they were only asking those who had not paid them before the ceasefire was declared.”
And when he warned the terrorists that they could not continue planning attacks, they looked at him strangely. “They responded that it was logical that their militants continued working.” The leader and negotiator Thierry explained it this way during a meeting: “You can't spend days doing nothing watching television. They have to do something, but that does not mean that we are going to carry out attacks.” He has also praised the work carried out by international observers. And even a talk that he had with Arnaldo Otegi, whom he has called “a key man” for the pacification of the Basque Country and the disappearance of ETA. “I think,” he told Otegui, “that you trust that we will end up giving in to ETA's pressure. You are very wrong.”
In another of the meetings the tension was maximum. Thierry told him to send this message to Eguiguren, the then president of the Socialist Party of Euskadi:
―Tell Jesus that if they don't accept the political agreement, he will wear the black tie again many times.
That this terrorist even shouted out to him to speak with the President of the Government. “From boss to boss,” he told her. “I have full powers,” Gómez Benítez responded. Anticipating a breakup, he chose to interrupt negotiations for a few days. Pressure from international observers did the rest.
In the next meeting, the ETA leader definitively broke off the negotiations. It was on May 21, 2007. ETA insisted on the union of Navarra with Euskadi through a fixed-term referendum and with the PSE committed. Later, he recalled, Otegi's work was key. “According to what they told us, he confronted ETA and said that we had to continue negotiating. This showed that the negotiation had been worth it.”
In February 2011, Batasuna took the final step by rejecting ETA violence in its statutes. They became a legal party. Months later, in October, the terrorist group declared the definitive cessation of its activity. “The nationalist left followed, therefore, the legal path, but it lacks the ethical path,” he said. “There is a lack of recognition of the damage caused by ETA. To the victims and to Basque and Spanish society. It lacks political criticism of terrorist activity. That will be the moment of true normalization of coexistence in the Basque Country.” At the end, EL PAÍS journalist Luis R. Aizpeolea, who presented the event, asked him:
-Should we negotiate with terrorists?
―You negotiate with terrorists, with war criminals and with genocide. Negotiations are made to avoid barbarism.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
_
#negotiator #Zapatero #Government #ETA #breaks #silence #nationalist #left #lacks #path #ethics