The Ministry of the Interior has definitively closed the approach of ETA prisoners to Basque prisons, a process that has lasted for the last five years and that since last autumn was practically finished. The latest approaches have been those of Irantzu Gallastegi Sodupe, Amaia, who participated in the kidnapping and murder of Miguel Ángel Blanco, and four other members of the organization: Gregorio Escudero Balerdi, Asier Borrero Toribio, Garikoitz Etxeberria Goikoetxea and Faustino Marcos Álvarez.
At this moment, the only prisoners convicted of ETA terrorism who are not in Euskadi and Navarra are a dozen inmates who are in France. All but one, however, are in the nearby Lannemezan prison, two hours from Donostia/San Sebastián.
As reported by Penitentiary Institutions, among the approaches approved to be transferred to Basque prisons is Irantzu Gallastegi Sodupe, alias 'Amaia', partner of Francisco Javier García Gaztelu, 'Txapote', one of the former ETA leaders with the highest number of crimes. The two are serving sentences for the murder of PP councilor Miguel Ángel Blanco, among other attacks.
The other four ETA members for whom the rapprochement has been approved are Gregorio Escudero Balerdi, Asier Borrero Toribio, Garikoitz Etxeberria Goikoetxea and Faustino Marcos Álvarez.
In this way, Natividad Jáuregui, 'Pepona' or 'Jaione', is the only ETA member of the 176 imprisoned in Spain who has not been transferred, since after his extradition from Belgium he has a pending case and is in preventive detention in Madrid. Another ETA member, Jon Gurtubay, was released a few days ago after serving his sentence.
The Ministry of the Interior complies in this way with Fernando Grande-Marlaska's announcement at the beginning of the legislature, when he pointed out that the prison policy is meaningless once ETA has disappeared. “The dispersal was an anti-terrorist policy, not a prison policy. With ETA dissolved and defeated by society, it makes no sense," Marlaska said in January 2019.
The Government's commitment, however, began to be evident once the dispersal of prisoners in Andalusia ended in July 2021, the community that has historically hosted more ETA prisoners.
The situation is radically different from the one that existed before the definitive end of terrorism, a little over 11 years ago.
In 2011, the only prisoners convicted of terrorism in Basque prisons were those who had taken the Nanclares route. Barely twenty were in prisons near the Basque Country and, for example, Andalusia continued to be the community with the most inmates of the terrorist group: 156 out of 527. Of the 137 ETA prisoners in French prisons, only 6 were in jails closest, those of Lammezan and Mont de Marsan.
In 2017 the number of prisoners had been drastically reduced: 347 between Spanish (270) and French (77) prisons. The average distance to the Basque Country, however, remained similar, according to what the group of relatives of Etxerat prisoners denounced at the time.
In fact, in November 2020, 27% of ETA prisoners were still in Andalusian prisons. Since the beginning of 2021, on the other hand, the Spanish government began to accelerate the announced end of the dispersal, which the Ministry of the Interior spoke of openly and which was also accepted by some associations of victims of terrorism.
The dispersal policy, applied by the Government of Felipe González since the late 1980s, was justified as a necessary strategy to promote reinsertion and avoid pressure from the prisoner group on those inmates who wished to abandon the discipline of the gang. The measure was also explained as a strategy to end the weight that ETA prisoners had in some prisons, especially in centers like Herrera de la Mancha, and to break their unity of action.
At the opposite pole, relatives of prisoners have been censuring that it was a strategy that sought revenge, harmed the relatives themselves and that it did not favor reintegration, at the same time that they have denounced traffic accidents, some with fatalities, motivated by this policy.
