May 6, 2001 was a Sunday and Borja went with his father, like every Sunday, to watch football. As a ritual they left the house at 6:25 p.m. and only five minutes later. On the way to the La Romareda stadium to see his team, Real Sociedad, this 17-year-old saw how his father, Manuel Giménez Abad, at that time a senator and president of the PP in Aragon, was shot in the head. . He saw his father collapse to the ground, he turned around and saw a man looking into his eyes.
That same person, with a cap and curly hair, fired a second time and then a third time to finish him off. As he left, she looked into his eyes and then she ran away for good.
Borja had just lost his father. The terrorist group ETA claimed responsibility for the attack. The boy went to testify before the Police to give the information of the person he saw as the murderer of his father but they could not identify him.
Twenty-two years later, Borja Giménez has faced that person again but in very different circumstances. The alleged murderer listened to the testimony of his victim’s son from the ‘fish tank’, the armored room of the National Court reserved for accused of terrorism.
Borja Giménez has gone to the National Court today to testify as a witness in the trial that started this Monday against Mikel Carrera Sarobe, alias ‘Ata’, who was number one of ETA and head of the military apparatus. Next to him, also sits on the bench Miren Itxaso Zaldua, ‘Sahatsa’. Both face a sentence of 30 years in prison. The two have denied their participation and assured that they were not in Zaragoza that day.
The victim’s son has recalled the day his life was cut short. “After shooting my father, he looked at me. He fired again and kept looking at me. He shot my father despite being on the ground. We saw each other’s faces perfectly, ”he recounted.
During the following years, several times he had to go to the Civil Guard offices to do photographic examinations but nothing, none was the man who looked at him.
Until in 2014 he received another call. They wanted to make another try. There was news in the investigation. This young man no longer lived in Zaragoza. He had gone to live in Brussels. He went to the Civil Guard headquarters in Madrid. It was a Friday and he again saw several photos of suspects. This time was different. There was that man who thirteen years later had stood in front of his father to end his life. He recognized him but they did not tell him who he was.
Ata had been arrested a few years earlier in France, as the alleged perpetrator of the murder of a French gendarme. He no longer wore curls but short hair. Giménez had to go to recognize him in Paris and he did. The features by which he could identify him were his jaws and especially his gaze. The ETA member’s defense tried to generate reasonable doubt as to whether Borja Giménez identified Ata because he really recognized him or he could have been suggested by photos he saw in the press. The son of the murdered ‘popular’ leader has insisted that Ata was the person he saw and that he did not see any newspaper that identified him as the murder of his father, a point that the court will have to resolve.
