Far-right Spaniard convicted for 1977 killing of five people leaves jail

A far-right Spanish activist convicted for the 1977 killing of five people in a Madrid trade union office left jail on Thursday after his prison sentence was reduced.

Carlos Garcia Julia, who was extradited to Spain from Brazil earlier this year, left the Soto del Real prison on the outskirts of Madrid just after 9:00 am, a spokeswoman for the government body which runs Spain’s prisons told AFP.

Garcia Julia was among those convicted of the January 24, 1977 attack by gunmen linked to far-right organisations against a legal office working for labour unions near the Atocha train station in central Madrid.

Three lawyers, a law student and an employee of the office were shot to death and four more were seriously injured.

It was one of the bloodiest attacks by shadowy far-right groups during Spain’s largely peaceful transition to democracy following the death of longtime dictator General Francisco Franco in 1975.

A Spanish court in 1980 sentenced Garcia Julia to 193 years in jail, but in 1991, a judge gave him temporary parole and allowed him to travel to Paraguay where he allegedly had a job offer.

He disappeared once in Paraguay. In 1996 he was arrested in Bolivia and convicted to six years in jail there for drug trafficking, but once again vanished while on prison leave.

Garcia Julia then spent over two decades on the run, until he was arrested again in December 2018 in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where he earned a living as an Uber driver with a fake identity.

He was extradited to Spain in February and jailed to complete his prison term, but a Spanish court then agreed to reduce his sentence, leading to his early release on Thursday.

A group which represents victims of the attack and their relatives, the “Lawyers of Atocha” Foundation, condemned his early release while he still had 12 years to serve, and has appealed the decision to reduce his sentence.

du/ds/CHZ/tgb