Urkullu rejects 320 dangerous common prisoners in Euskadi while attracting 140 ETA members

The Vasco-Ararteko Ombudsman has warned the Government of Urkullu that it cannot “proceed to the systematic transfer” of dangerous common prisoners to prisons in the rest of Spain after analyzing the complaint made by an inmate who was sent from the Zaballa prison (Álava ) to Duenas (Palencia). The Ararteko makes ugly the Basque Executive that after announcing the “bases of a Basque prison model” has a “margin for improvement in compliance with the constitutional mandate and current regulations” with these prisoners. The Basque Executive has transferred 120 common prisoners to prisons in the rest of Spain and denied the request of another 200 to be welcomed in the Basque Country while receiving 85 members of ETA in the three prisons it has managed since October 1, 2021.

The Basque Ombudsman has ruled for the first time on the strategy used by the Basque Government to send the most complicated common prisoners to prisons in the rest of Spain. In a resolution prepared by the Ararteko team specializing in penitentiary matters, the complaint of a common prisoner who was transferred from the Zaballa prison to Dueñas in Álava was addressed after being involved in an incident with other inmates.

The punished inmate intervened in a massive fight that took place in the Basauri prison (Vizcaya) on July 21, 2022. Prison officials managed to defuse the tumult generated between two groups of inmates on the stairs that connect the cells with the dining rooms of this old prison in which almost 400 inmates are admitted.. The inmate was identified as one of the leaders of the fight, locked up and transferred to the Zaballa prison, a type center inaugurated in 2021 and which has a dozen modules in front of the Basauri prison, with a pavilion and another auxiliary building .

The Basauri Penitentiary Board unanimously decreed the regression of the inmate from second degree to first degree for his behavior, but, in addition, the Government of Urkullu demanded that Penitentiary Institutions send the prisoner to Dueñas, alleging that he lacks isolation modules in the three prisons which it manages since October 1, 2021.

systematic transfers

“Efforts should be made to avoid proceeding systematically with the transfer outside the autonomous community of the Basque Country of those people who cannot serve a sentence in centers in the Basque Country because it could make it impossible to guarantee adequate intervention in these cases by the Basque authorities due to the characteristics of the centers that exist today in the Basque territory”, notes the Ararteko in his recommendation to the Basque Government. A warning that supports the complaint made by the Dueñas prison unions about the systematic transfer of dangerous prisoners from Euskadi to this prison.

As EL MUNDO from Castilla y León announced, in Dueñas there are 340 common Basque prisoners that the Government of Urkullu does not want to accept in its prisons. The Minister of Justice, Beatriz Artolazabal (PNV), recognized in the Basque Parliament in November 2022 that there had been 120 transfers of inmates from Basque prisons to other centers. The now former counselor – having presented herself as a nationalist candidate for the Mayor's Office of Vitoria – also numbered 110 denials of transfers of prisoners to the Basque Country for lack of “roots” in response to the request for information made by the PP+Cs parliamentarian Luis Garrido.

But the union representatives in Dueñas of ACAIP-UGT and Tu Abandono Me Puede Matar (TAMPM) raise the number of Basque prisoners who are in this jail to 340 when they would like to serve their sentences in the three prisons in Euskadi. A circumstance that contrasts with the almost 90 transfers of ETA members accepted by the Urkullu government since 2021 and that will be completed in the coming days with the reception of the last five convicted of terrorism who were in prisons in the rest of Spain.

Currently, there are 140 ETA prisoners who are formally serving their sentences in Basque prisons, although 20 of them do so at their homes and the rest have unique compliance conditions agreed upon by the prison directors with a delegation of EH representatives. Bildu.

The presence of 340 Basque prisoners in Dueñas has caused, as the unions have publicly denounced, security problems with an increase in attacks suffered by officials. The ACAIP union claimed in 2022 to the Ombudsman of Spain to analyze “the reasons why the transfer to Euskadi of Basque prisoners is denied”. From TAMPM warned that the “change of profile” of the internal inmates in Dueñas affects the increase of dangerousness.”

Denunciations that together with the recommendation of the Ararteko have forced the Basque Government to agree a protocol of coordination and cooperation with Penitentiary Institutions to regulate the transfer of the most complicated common prisoners from Euskadi to other Spanish prisons. The document signed between the new Minister of Justice, Nerea Melgosa (PNV), and the Secretary of Penitentiary Institutions, Luis Ortiz (PSOE), includes the commitment of the Basque Executive to enable in Zaballa a security module throughout 2024.