Saturday, October 5, 2013

Spain: state terrorist Gral. Rodríguez Galindo set free

This is a clear example of double standards when speaking of terrorism. While the prisoners of ETA are given retroactively what amounts to life penalties¹, the prisoners of Spanish death squads are treated with all benevolence. 

It would be naive to expect otherwise but just in case someone is still believes that the law is the same for all. 

Guardia Civil Gral. Rodríguez Galindo was one of the key actors of the death squad known as Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación (GAL, sometimes they used other acronyms), which murdered a large number of Basque citizens, some ETA members but many others not at all: political leaders, journalists, local activists, passersby and people they mistook for someone else. Galindo specifically was also involved in large scale drug dealing. 

Many trials against the GAL were fruitless or almost but Galindo and two other military policemen were eventually found guilty of the kidnapping, torture and murder of Basque exiles Josean Lasa and Joxi Zabala. Their brutally mutilated corpses were buried in quicklime in the countryside of Valencia. 

In 2001 they were punished with more than 70 years of prison each, 75 in the case of Galindo.

Galindo already enjoyed, since 2004, a privileged of home prison on alleged "health issues" (you'd have to watch the irate Spanish chauvinists in TV when an elderly ETA member got a similar deal recently because of a terminal cancer).

Now he has been just set free. The tribunal said that he has "fulfilled two thirds of his sentence, after discounting the redemptions". 2x75/3=50, not 12! What "redemptions" if he was at home, not being able to work for the prison system?

Probably the most favorable possible reading of the law allows for this but the case is that he is a brutal terrorist, kidnapper, torturer and murderer and that in other comparable cases no redemption nor reductions of any kind are considered. 

When the Basque People is being subject to yet another inquisitorial persecution, not against armed fighters but against human rights defenders, this only adds to the many many grievances we have against the Spanish occupation.

Source: Naiz Info[es].

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¹ Parot doctrine: sentences add up even beyond the constitutional limit of 30 years and no redemptions whatsoever are applied. It is applied retroactively against the repeated jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights.

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