The promotion of Lieutenant General Arturo Espejo Valero and his appointment as head of the Support Command of the Civil Guard has generated a cascade of reactions in the political arena. The reason is his alleged connection with the interrogations of Mikel Zabalza, who died on November 26, 1985 after passing through the Intxaurrondo barracks. Unidas Podemos, the PNV and EH Bildu have submitted questions and requests to appear in Congress in relation to this promotion.
Specifically, Unidas Podemos, through Ismael Cortés, its deputy spokesperson for the Interior Commission, and the deputy for Bizkaia, Roberto Uriarte, has registered a series of questions about this case, including one that refers to the declassification of the documents referring to the death of Zabalza, a 33-year-old citizen from Navarre who worked as a bus driver in San Sebastián and who was arrested, together with several relatives and friends, accused of belonging to ETA. A few days after the arrests, all the detainees were released and denounced brutal torture. Zabalza remained missing for several days, until his handcuffed body appeared in the Bidasoa River.
The Basque Government has recognized Mikel Zabalza as a victim of police abuse, concluding that his death, after being detained by the Civil Guard, was "violent in nature" and was "the result of torture with subsequent disappearance.
For his part, the PNV spokesman in the Congress of Deputies, Aitor Esteban, has registered a battery of questions to the Government about that of Espejo Specifically, the jeltzale leader wants to know if, in the opinion of the Executive, "an implicated in a case of torture, which culminated in the death of an innocent person, is deserving of promotions and decorations", and if "he believes that those who were Zabalza's custodians and who gave an official version of what happened that has been proven false personify the values that the Civil Guard claims to defend”.
Esteban recalls in his writing that one of the people who was guarding Zabalza in Intxaurrondo, according to what was reported by the Civil Guard itself, was then Lieutenant Arturo Espejo. Finally, the jeltzale spokesman requests the declassification of the information held by the Executive on this case.
EH Bildu, finally, has requested the appearance in Congress of the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, to explain the reasons for the appointment. The deputy of EH Bildu, Jon Iñarritu, asks if it is "ideal that the most responsible person in one of the most shady cases that occurred within that police force be found in the leadership of the Civil Guard", such as the death de Zabalza, after being arrested by the Civil Guard and taken to the Intxaurrondo barracks”.
The Mikel Zabalza Gogoan platform from Aezkoa, the town where Zabalza was born, has criticized in a statement that this appointment shows that "torturers have total impunity." This group points out that Arturo Espejo was a lieutenant of the Intxaurrondo information service when Zabalza was arrested and that, according to the newspaper El Mundo in 1995, "he directed the arrest and his interrogation", during which he was tortured to death by the guards civilians Enrique Dorado Villalobos and Felipe Bayo Leal. According to this version, seeing that he "had gotten out of hand", they took him to Espejo's office, who gave him "mouth to mouth", to no avail.
This platform points out that Espejo prepared "the official version" and invented "that Zabalza had fled" when they supposedly took him in search of a hideout in the Bidasoa area that never existed.
Arturo Espejo has already testified as a defendant in the Zabalza case before a court in San Sebastián; the case, however, was closed in 1988
Two years ago, following the premiere of the documentary Non dago Mikel?, on this case, a recording came to light in which a conversation is heard between the former Cesid operations chief and former colonel Juan Alberto Perote, and the captain of the Civil Guard Pedro Gómez Nieto.
In the audio, the latter points out his conviction that Mikel Zabalza died in Intxaurrondo after being tortured, while offering precise details about a torture procedure that, from his words, seemed habitual.
In the recording, Perote introduces the question by pointing out that "Zabalza's song is very ugly." From there, Gómez Nieto offers an assessment of what happened: "My quick judgment of values is that they have gone too far, that they have remained in the interrogation." Subsequently, the captain adds that his "impression" is that "it was possibly a cardiac arrest as a result of the plastic bag on his head."
From there, Gómez Nieto recounts a story that coincides with the one that those who were detained along with Zabalza have been maintaining for decades. “They made many mistakes, that is, they were questioning him while the relatives were in the next room (…). 'The mother' (a pseudonym) says that she saw him with the hood, and I think that they have stayed, ”says Gómez Nieto.
Likewise, the civil guard recounts a previous episode in which another detainee was on the verge of losing his life: “The herrialde buru, the head of the commandos who intervened in the death of Captain Martín Barrios, was on the verge of staying with us. To Captain Pindado and me (...). There comes a time when what they are breathing is your carbon monoxide and then you are drowning. He drowns, he drowns... His sphincters open, the guy drowns and on top of that he's looking at us, because the fact of the matter is not that he doesn't see anything (...). The hood must be transparent so that he can see life and the sensation of death that he is getting ”.
Mikel Zabalza was arrested in November 1985 along with his partner, Idoia Aierbe, and Zabalza's cousin, Manuel Bizkai. In addition, the Civil Guard made another arrest, that of Ion Arretxe, and hours later arrested two of Mikel Zabalza's brothers, Patxi and Aitor.
In a few days all of them were released. Meanwhile, Zabalza was still missing. The rest of the detainees, already released, denounced having suffered brutal torture and expressed their concern about the situation of Zabalza. Bizkai pointed out that he had heard his cousin vomit, while Ion Arretxe stated that he had heard "heartbreaking screams from a man". Idoia Aierbe also denounced having seen Zabalza "with a plastic bag over his head" during the period of solitary confinement.
Zabalza's mother went to Intxaurrondo to inquire about her son's situation. "Look in the lost and found," one of the guards even told him. On December 15, 20 days after the arrest, Zabalza's body was found handcuffed in the Bidasoa river.
Neither Zabalza nor any of the detainees that night was ever sentenced for belonging to ETA. Nor has anyone ever been convicted of Zabalza's death.
