The Basque Government, EH Bildu, victims of the GAL and other political formations, including a PSE deputy, have reacted with astonishment to the statements of the former Minister of the Interior José Barrionuevo, who yesterday Sunday in an interview in El País came to justify terrorism of State in the fight against ETA when he was a minister.
Among other issues, he acknowledged that he ordered "Second Marey to be released", kidnapped by mistake by the Spanish police, and euphemistically implied that the alternative was to kill him. Specifically, he pointed out that when he found out about the error, he gave the order to release him (after nine days, because "what was the alternative?" After remembering that they should not cause "more disorder" than they had already caused.
Barrionuevo, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for that kidnapping and embezzlement of public funds and was pardoned shortly after, also acknowledged in the interview that he gave the order to arrest ETA member Larretxea Goñi in France, without the approval of the French authorities. . An operation that went wrong when the French gendarmes appeared. "They came to catch him, but he was such a big guy that he did not fit in the trunk. As he resisted, the gendarmes arrived and disrupted the matter. I assumed it and said that I had ordered it, but there was no repercussion," he says. the former minister.
The Basque Government spokesman and Minister of Culture and Language Policy, Bingen Zupiria, assured this Monday that the former minister's statements "humiliate the victims" and acknowledged that when he heard them "he remembered those who in those same terms justify violence of ETA". In his opinion, if "we put ourselves in the shoes of the victims" of the violence of the GAL and the State and listen to a former Minister of the Interior express himself in this way, one can only feel "humiliation".
"The victims are being humiliated with those statements, with the tone and with everything that it implies. Mr. Barrionuevo is implying that they were aware of the existence of state terrorist violence; that they only reacted to it when the French government squeezed them and suggests inappropriate behavior by the Police," he denounced.
For her part, Beatriz Artolazabal, Minister of Equality, Justice and Social Policies of the Basque Government, yesterday described Barrionuevo's statements as "very serious", "or rather, confessions".
The leader of EH Bildu, Arnaldo Otegi, wondered on Sunday when the State would take responsibility for the GALs and demanded that it take a step forward like the one taken by the Aberzale left last year, when it offered a public statement defending the peaceful path and admitting the pain that ETA had caused. This Monday he has gone further and has accused Barrionuevo of vindicating "State terrorism", with "total impunity". For this reason, he has denounced that the "silence of the majority of judges, the media and parties is complicit."
And EH Bildu published a message on social networks in which he assured that while they are committed to "recognition and reparation for all victims, the victims of state terrorism are constantly humiliated." "Barrionuevo's words are a shame, a real humiliation for the victims and a reflection of impunity," they deplored.
But the outrage has also reached the Basque socialists. The Gipuzkoan deputy for Mobility and Spatial Planning, Rafaela Romero (PSE), stated that "just as an 'ongi etorri' humiliates the victims" of ETA terrorism, so does former minister José Barrionuevo. After warning that he will never justify the "history of ETA's violence" being prolonged through a response of "dark, cowardly and deplorable" State violence, Romero considered that the latter is always "much more serious and deplorable". because the State is there to try to protect.
Likewise, he hoped that a pronouncement would be made by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, or by any member of the Government of Spain. "It does not have to be the president of the Government. I do not know if the words console the victims, but here there is a crime contemplated in the Penal Code, the humiliation of the victims," he insisted.
"She is the only one from the PSOE (Romero) who has said something; it is a shame," lamented Maixabel Lasa, widow of Juan María Jáuregui, a Basque PSE politician assassinated by ETA. "What are you waiting for? Do you need permission to talk about this issue? It is an opportunity for the PSOE to talk about these issues," said the director of the Basque Government's Office for Victims of Terrorism between 2001 and 2012.
“I find it embarrassing. I still remember that he, Vera and company went to jail, and the embarrassment of others when Felipe González accompanied them, like heroes”, he explained this morning on RAC1. "You can see the moral height of this type of person," he has indicated.
Maider García, whose father was killed by the GAL, described Barrionuevo's words as "extremely serious" and as "new humiliation towards all the victims of State terrorism" and was especially annoyed by "the calmness" with which The former head of the Interior speaks "without showing an iota of regret". Something that, in his opinion, demonstrates the impunity with which he speaks. "What worries the most is the lack of responses to these statements. No judge is going to ask for explanations," he lamented.
Pili Zabala, sister of Joxi Zabala, kidnapped, tortured and murdered by the GAL, insisted that the interview demonstrates the legal insecurity suffered by the victims of the State and also denounced the silence of Spanish politics.
The former leader of Podemos and former Vice President of the Government Pablo Iglesas affirmed that the Spanish State practiced State terrorism and the parliamentary spokesman for United We Can, Pablo Echenique wondered why El País was interviewing "a convicted State terrorist, who boasts of his terrorist activities and that he exercised State terrorism — he collaborated with the clandestine murder of people — while he was Felipe González's Minister of the Interior?" "What do you want to tell us?" He left on his Twitter account.
