The National Court has sentenced the former ETA leader Carmen Guisasola to 20 years in prison after the repetition of the trial ordered by the Supreme Court after a first acquittal.
It is about the murder with a car bomb of the policeman Ignacio Pérez Álvarez in Galdácano (in April 1990, of which the ETA members Óscar Abad Palacios and José Ramón Martínez were also accused, who have again been acquitted in this second trial.
The sentence means clarifying that it was Guisasola who provided the explosive to the material authors of the attack, but it will have no repercussions on the former terrorist leader. Years ago, Guisasola moved away from the postulates of the band, joined the Nanclares road and is now free.. She was released in 2014, with the repeal of the Parot doctrine, having served the maximum prison term, so the sentence will not mean her return to prison.
Her repentance did not reach the point of acknowledging her participation in the attack for which she has just been sentenced.. In the first trial he denied any connection to the case, while in the repeat hearing he refused to respond to the accusation.
The Second Section of the Criminal Chamber has handed down this sentence after the Supreme Court ordered a repeat trial against the three, considering that the facts were not prescribed, contrary to what the Court had established to acquit them.
With a new court, as ordered by the Supreme Court, the Court sentences Guisasola to 20 years and one day in prison as a necessary cooperator in a crime of murder for terrorist purposes and the payment of compensation to the 60 affected by the damage from the explosion.
33 years ago
The Court agrees to the application of the mitigation of undue delays due to the fact that the events occurred more than 33 years ago and the reopening of the procedure occurred a decade ago.
The magistrates consider it proven that in the first weeks of 1990, after the surveillance carried out on the policeman, Guisasola “decided to end his life, as an action by the terrorist organization ETA, to which he belonged, framed in the Vizcaya commando”.
To do this, he chose the method of the explosive device, which he had in an apartment in Bilbao and which he handed over to one or more other terrorists so that they could place and activate it remotely.
The court details in its resolution the seven indications that lead it to consider the defendant guilty, such as that at the time of the events she was a member of ETA, that the gang claimed responsibility for the action, that it followed the modus operandi of other terrorist actions, as well as that the defendant herself planned attacks to end the lives of soldiers and members of the security forces.
In addition, it points out that the defendant dominated the house in Bilbao in the months before and after the events -her fingerprint was found inside- and that in that property, two months after the attack, materials were found with which she could manufacture the explosive device used.
“The court cannot believe that all the facts of which there is direct or indicative evidence and which have been stated, are due to chance and it is convinced that the defendant intervened decisively and decisively in the fatal action of Galdácano beyond all reasonable doubt, by manufacturing the explosive device that ended the life of Don Ignacio”.
On the contrary, the Chamber acquitted the other two accused of these acts, Óscar Abad Palacios and José Ramón Martínez, considering that police confessions cannot be used as they do not have proof of charge proving their participation in the terrorist action.