Repatriation and Political Status for Basque Political Prisoners

national | rights, freedoms and repression | press release Wednesday March 08, 2006 15:11 by Belfast Basque Committee basquebelfast at hotmail dot com

Last week two Basque Political Prisoners were killed by Spanish criminal prison policy and they are already four in the last 20 months.

Igor Angulo (Bilbao, 1973) was found dead in his cell in the Spanish prison of Cuenca (400 miles away from the Basque Country) where he was the only Basque Political Prisoner in the early hours of Sunday the 28th of February. Although the official version said he was hanging from his cell window and that he committed suicide neither his family nor the Basque people believe it. The forensic said he was laying on the bed (first contadiction) and his hands were tied by leather shoe laces (forbidden by the prison authorities). His girlfriend was speaking with him through the phone just few hours before his death and they were making plans for the future. He had no reason to committ suicide. The post mortem doesn’t provide any proof of suicide.

Roberto Sainz (Bilbao, 1965) felt bad during the morning of Friday the 3rd of March while holding a protest for Political Status in the Spanish prison of Aranjuez (300 miles from the Basque Country). Later on his comrades were told he died from a heart attack at the prison hospital. His lawyers and family denounced medical mistreatment as he didn’t get apropiate help.

Their funerals and popular protests were brutally attacked by the police.

More than 700 Basque Political Prisoners are hostages in more than 80 Spanish and French gaols hundreds of miles away from home. 12 prisoners were killed in the last 20 years and more than 20 relatives were killed in their way to visit them.

Despite the fact that ETA have not killed anybody as a result of their campaign in the last three years, 12 Basque political activists have lost their lives at the hands of the states.

All of this along with the political trial against 60 cultural, political, social and union pro-independence activists going on in the Special Spanish Court, torture, arrests, extraditions, new life sentences for political prisoners, banning of political and popular organizations, denying of civil and political rights render the situation in the Basque Country a powder keg and don't help at all the efforts that are being done by the left wing pro-independence movement and other nationalist and progressive forces to develop a process of democratic resolution of the conflict.

The Basque people need more than ever our support in this historical moment. Therefore the Belfast Basque Committee is calling a protest on SATURDAY 11TH 1PM CULTÚRLANN, FALLS ROAD, BELFAST.

Join the protests!! Support Basque Political Prisoners!! For a political resolution of the Basque-Spanish-French conflict!!

basquebelfast@hotmail.com