As truce rumours fade, no early release for ETA killer

20 February 2006

MADRID — As controversy rages over rumours of an ETA truce, a judge rules the organisation’s worst killer will not be released early.

Judge Fernando Grande-Marlaska charged Henri Unai Parot with membership in an armed group and incitement to commit terrorist attacks.

Parot, a jailed member of the Basque armed group ETA who has already spent 16 years in jail and could have been released in 2009, will have to stay in prison until 2020.

His sentences have been added together to make a single 30-year jail term.

Judge Grande-Marlaska filed a new indictment last week against Parot, who could have been released as early as 2009 for his previous convictions of carrying out numerous lethal attacks.

Grande-Marlaska charged Parot with membership in an armed group and incitement to commit terrorist attacks.

The judge based the indictment on a letter Parot allegedly wrote in 2001 calling on ETA to carry out attacks “against the state’s vital” institutions, including the Bank of Spain and the stock exchanges in Madrid and Barcelona.

Parot has been in jail since 1990 after he was convicted of 26  murders and carrying out terrorist attacks.

He was sentenced to an accumulative jail term of more than 3,000 years.

Such lengths are common in Spain for ETA members.

But the maximum jail time he could serve was 30 years, and automatic sentence reductions were likely to cut it to 20.

There has been growing concern in recent days at the possibility that Parot and several other ETA members would enjoy early releases.

Meanwhile, José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero faced stiff criticism for raising expectations of a truce – only for ETA to say nothing about laying down its arms when it issued a statement at the weekend.

Zapatero said last week that the moment was right for thinking it might be the “beginning of the end” for the terrorist organisation.

[Copyright EFE with Expatica]

Subject: Spanish news