The Ombudsman, Soledad Becerril, presented the case study “The rights of ETA victims. Their situation today” to the Joint Committee for Relations with the Ombudsman. The study makes 17 recommendations to the Government and to the Attorney General’s Office for improving defence of the rights of the 864 fatal victims and more than 2,500 people injured by ETA terrorism.
This study is the result of the commission entrusted to the Office of the Ombudsman by the Lower House of the Spanish Parliament in April 2015, asking it to analyse how the human rights of ETA victims had been affected, and the current situation of those victims.
It is divided into four parts. The first analyses the violation of human rights that ETA victims have suffered. Of all the crimes committed by the terrorist organisation ETA, many have been left unresolved by the law courts. This reality exacerbates the painful situation of the relatives affected and that of the victims themselves, in the case of the injured.
The United Nations High Commission for Human Rights concludes, in a study in 2006, that the right to know the truth about manifest violations of human rights and serious infringements of human rights’ rules and regulations is an autonomous and inalienable right that must be protected and guaranteed by the State.
The Ombudsman also stressed that attempts are currently being made to apply international criminal law to five leaders of the terrorist group in a case in which ETA crimes are being judged as crimes against humanity.
In the second part, the situation of the victims and their relatives is described, going through the regulations that affect them. The third part goes over the penitentiary situation of the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks, analysing the rights of victims in the terrorist’s lawsuit.
The fourth chapter contains the account and memory of ETA terrorist attacks given in textbooks for the second year of Upper Secondary Education. To prepare this chapter, 14 textbooks by different publishers were analysed.
As the Ombudsman has explained, in all these books “what one misses is defence of the first of the Human Rights; the right to life. One misses reflection on the harm done by terrorism and on the situation of the families and victims” and of all the people who had to leave their homes.
“There is hardly any mention of the laws of Solidarity with the Victims (1999), or of Protecting the Victims (Sept. 2011) and none of the texts analysed includes a testimony by a single victim, or of what the attack signified for them or for their family”, noted Soledad Becerril, for whom the textbooks should document the harm caused by ETA terrorism and make it clear who the victims were and who the executioners were.
In her speech, the Ombudsman also stressed the fact that members of the Office of the Ombudsman were constantly concerned about the victims of terrorism, and she gave her assurance that “we have always been by their side”.
Soledad Becerril also recalled the victims of unresolved crimes. The Prosecution Service, according to what it has told the Office of the Ombudsman, “has continued to take every step necessary to shed light on unresolved terrorist attacks, to prevent them from lapsing, if they had not lapsed already, and to see to it that the people sought in connection with such crimes who have not been taken into custody are handed over”.
The Ombudsman stressed the importance of international cooperation for combating ETA terrorism. In that respect, she has approached the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, asking it to pass on information to other states such as the Belgian state, which currently does not authorise extraditions, about the harm caused by terrorism.
She has also asked for the presence of victims to be encouraged at international forums so that their memory and the memory of the people who were killed is not forgotten and to make it possible for a true account to be put together. To contribute to that account, the Centre for the Memory of the Victims of Terrorism, which is based in Vitoria, “has been a very good initiative, which should be supported with all the means possible, not just financial ones”, she said.
To find out the opinion of the victims of terrorism, representative associations and organisations were convened. The Office of the Ombudsman also received representatives of the Administration and asked the Ministry of the Interior and the Audiencia Nacional (High Court) Prosecution Service for reports.
