Spanish Police "tortured" 34 Basque Youth Including "stripping And Fondling" Young Woman

international | rights, freedoms and repression | news report Wednesday March 03, 2010 05:30 by Diarmuid Breatnach - personal capacity

BASQUE PARENTS CAMPAIGNING FOR THEIR CHILDREN STATE THAT THEY ARE INNOCENT AND HAVE BEEN TORTURED BY SPANISH POLICE

Basque parents seek support from the authorities for their sons and daughters abused and tortured by Spanish police. The mothers and fathers of the 34 young people snatched during the massive Spanish police operation against Basque youth last November have transformed their agony into into energetic campaigning. Although they have no connection to one anohter other than their shared anguish, they have joined their voices, going from door to door of the authorities to tell the story of their hardship. Included in the allegations of Spanish police torture of the 34 youth are those of special sexual humiliation and threats against the 14 young women among them. They ask for only one thing: the protection of the authorities so that no more families have to endure what they did.

Article by Oihana LLORENTE, Basque newspaper GARA journalist (translated and edited by Inaki Irigoien and Diarmuid Breatnach)

The mothers and fathers of the 34 young people snatched during the massive Spanish police operation against Basque youth last November have transformed their agony into into energetic campaigning. Although they have no connection to one anohter other than their shared anguish, they have joined their voices, going from door to door to tell the story of their hardship. They ask for only one thing: the protection of the authorities so that no more families have to endure what they did.

After talking to the Ombudsman, representatives of the Donostia Town Council, with the Office for the Victims of Gender Violence of the Basque Government, with several unions and political parties and even with the Bishop of Donostia/ San Sebastian, the families of the Gipuzkoa youth met yesterday with political representatives in the government body of the Basque province of Gipuzkoa.
“We know our children and we know that they are not lying”, Iñaki Egaña stated for the record at the outset of the meeting and then went on to recount the difficult experience of being told by his son Eihar what he had to endure during his time held incommunicado in police hands. Egaña told them that the beatings, humiliation, threats and psychological ill-treatment were common to most of those detained but that there was a particular level of violence from both the Guardia Civil and the Spanish Police towards the fourteen females. “Because they were women” alleged Rosi Rubio, mother of Garazi Rodriguez – one of the young women arrested and jailed; she recounted how after five days without news from her 22 year-old daughter she met her behind glass in the prison “relieved to be in jail”.

“In this society of supposed intolerance of violence against women my daughter was humiliated because she was a woman” she denounced. “Who is permitting this to happen?” she asked.
She admitted to being “tired” of going from door to door recounting what happened to her daughter, explaining the consequences of maintaining the detainees incommunicado; she demanded that the necessary steps be taken immediately. “We are not politicians, we are only here representing our sons and daughters and ourselves”, she pointed out before asking for the support of the authorities to prevent similar events from occurring to anybody else.

Rubio described to representatives from Basque political parties PNV, Hamaikabat, Aralar and Alternativa (representatives of Spanish unionist parties PP and PSE did not bother to attend) how her daughter had been stripped naked in police custody while five police looked at her and one of them kissed her naked body. “They only allowed her to get dressed if she incriminated herself, and for each one of the crimes that she claimed to have carried out she was allowed a single piece of clothing” she denounced.

"IDEOLOGICAL MOTIVES FOR ARRESTS"
“How are they not going to incriminate themselves in police custody?” she asked the political representatives. She described the 34 testimonies of the detained and jailed as “terrible and hair-raising”. Despite the discomfort of having to hear the description of the mistreatment they wanted to denounce the “lynching by the media” to which their sons and daughters have been subjected. They pointed out that despite the order that judicial proceedings be kept secret for the moment, the media had accused their sons and daughters of many things. The families went even further and denounced the detention of their sons and daughter as “ideological” and pointed out that apart from the self- incriminating statements made when in police custody there is no evidence against them.

NOTES: Allegations of torture against police in the Spanish state are common, particularly with regard to their treatment of pro-Independence Basque youth. The sexual element of torture is a persistent thread running through the testimonies of many victims, with allegations by female detainees that they were stripped and kept in nakedness or in their underwear, sexually molested, threatened with rape and in some cases had objects inserted into the vagina (in one infamous case the barrel of a gun which the police told her was loaded). Methods of psychological and physical torture that do not leave bruises are the most common but in 13th of February 1981 the body of Joxe Arregi, who died in police custody, was found to be covered in burns and bruises; in 2001 photos of Unai Romano’s face, vividly discoloured and swollen, shocked the Basque nation.

The Spanish authorities respond that the claims of torture and humiliation are concocted by the pro-Independence Left (which they always link to the armed group ETA) in order to discredit the military and the police; they rarely investigate the claims, even when those who have given testimony incriminating themselves or others protest in court that their statements were obtained through torture and that they wish to repudiate them. Amnesty International and Raporteurs, commissions and committees of the United Nations and of the European Union, along with around forty anti-torture organisations within the Spanish state itself have condemned the Spanish state for its tolerance or practice of torture and the impunity granted to the torturers. In a rare case of conviction, the police officers were given short sentences, most of which they did not serve and were permitted to return to the police force.

Most of the allegations of torture concern the paramilitary Guardia Civil and the national police (Policia Nacional) but increasingly of late also the Ertzainza, the police force of the Basque Autonomous Government, and occur during the incommunicado period permitted under Spain’s anti-terrorism laws. This incomunicado detention is the period when nearly all incriminating statements are obtained, which then form most of the evidence for sending the accused to jail.

Spain currently holds the Presidency of the European Union until June 2010.