The Prosecutor’s Office has opposed that the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court (TS) reopens the case of the PP councilor killed in 1997 by the ETA terrorist band, Miguel Ángel Blanco, asking that the resources presented by the PP and by the popular accusations exercised by the Association Dignity and Justice (DYJ) and the Villacisneros Foundation are inadmitted.
It was last October when the National Court agreed to file the open cause against the former heads of the terrorist organization María Soledad Iparraguirre, aka ‘Anboto’; Miguel Albisu Iriarte, ‘Mikel Antza’, and Ignacio de Gracia Arregui, ‘Iñaki de Rentería’. Now, the Lieutenant Prosecutor of the Supreme Court and ‘number two’ of the State Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, María Ángeles Sánchez Conde, has asked the high court not to reopen the case when considering that the facts are already prescribed, according to Europa Press.
Sánchez Conde’s criteria is contrary to the Board of Prosecutors of the Supreme Criminal Section, which at a meeting last February supported by majority the appeals presented by the accusations of the ‘Miguel Ángel Blanco’ case to reopen it, against the decision of the National Court (AN), which agreed to file it by prescription. In that Board of Prosecutors, the two heads of the Criminal Section of the Supreme, Fernando Prieto and Fidel Cadena, defended disparate criteria – the first one thought like the minority – so the matter was left in the hands of both hierarchical superior, which is Sánchez Conde.
In the writings, to which Europa Press has had access, the Lieutenant Prosecutor of the Supreme Court defends that the case is prescribed, since since the facts were committed until the interposition of the complaints had elapsed more than 20 years, the deadline set by the law to investigate these crimes. “In the present assumption no action has been directed before the period of prescription against those processed in this procedure. No interruption action of the prescription has been identified, ”he insists.
However, Sánchez Conde rejects the argument of popular accusations that the archive implies a violation of the right to effective judicial protection. “The reason should be inadmitted, lacking any foundation, procedure in any case to its complete dismissal,” he says.
The judicial journey
The defenses had been claiming from the beginning of the investigations that the facts had prescribed, although their claims were successively rejected – also by the National Court’s Criminal Chamber – waiting for the appropriate procedural moment. That moment came after last August the then head of the Central Court of Instruction number 6 processed these three ex -heads of ETA and José Javier Arizcuren Ruiz, ‘Kantauri’, for kidnapping and murder.
In response, the defenses, with the support of the Prosecutor’s Office – not without internal debate – the processing resorted. The Criminal Chamber proved them right, except for the case of ‘Kantauri’, singular because it was already prosecuted for these facts by Judge Eloy Velasco in 2016, when those 20 years had not yet passed.
The accusations, dissatisfied with this decision, went to the Supreme. The PP in its resource against the file for ‘Iñaki de Rentería’ and ‘Mikel Antza’, to which Europa Press had access, alleged that this case offers the Supreme Court “an unbeatable opportunity to pronounce on two issues of the utmost importance related to the prescription Institute, in general, and its application regime in the crimes committed by terrorist bands, in particular”, which has not so far approached.
In the first place, the PP defended “the possibility of immediately applying the extensions of the prescription deadlines to facts that were still pursuing – they had not prescribed – at the time of its entry into force”, considering that it is a procedural issue and not of substantive law – as it understands that it appreciates that “it would be an unfavorable jurisprudential change” -.
On this, the ‘popular’ pointed out “a constant jurisprudential doctrine of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), also accepted by the Court of Justice of the European Union (TJUE)”, and even by the AN in previous resolutions, which establishes “the procedural nature of the regulatory provisions of the prescription and the compatibility of apply Persecution of facts not prescribed at the time of its entry into force ”.
Subsidiary, the PP put on the table the “classical jurisprudence” of the TS itself, “inaugurated” with the ‘Second Marey Case’, and which was endorsed by the Constitutional Court (TC), according to which “in these assumptions of organized criminality the computation of the prescription is interrupted when the procedure is directed against the group or criminal organization, and this is not appointed nominally. responsible or data are given through which they could be identified. ”
“Unreasonable” change
Along the same lines, the resource presented by DyJ against the car relating to ‘Mikel Antza’ e ‘Iñaki de Rentería’ – at which Europa Press also had access – asked to reopen the ‘Miguel Ángel Blanco’ case, accusing the AN of departing “radically and unreasonable from the criteria supported so far.” Dyj explained that, so far the AN “recognized the procedural nature of the consequences that were derived from its application and, therefore, it recognized the normal retroactive application of the extensions of the period of prescription of crimes when they had not prescribed, as exactly happened at the time of entering into force in 2010 the imprescriptibility of the terrorist murder in our Criminal Code (CP), having passed only 13 years of the murder of Miguel Ángel Ángel White”.
Especially, he continued, “taking into account the unlimited jurisprudence of the ECHR and the TJUE, which has recognized procedural nature to the Institute of the Criminal Prescription, leading to an illegitimate violation of the right to effective judicial protection, in its modality of access to jurisdiction.” However, the Victims Association argued that, “if the crime has not prescribed at the time the expansion of the prescription period takes place, its retroactive application does not imply any violation of the principle of unfavorable irretroactivity.”
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