ETA member Carmen Guisasola sentenced to 20 years after repeating the trial for which she was acquitted

The National Court has sentenced the former ETA leader Carmen Guisasola to 20 years in prison for the murder of a police officer with a bicycle bomb in Galdácano (Vizcaya) in 1990, after being tried again by order of the Supreme Court, which revoked the sentence in which she was acquitted because the facts were considered prescribed. Yes, two other members of the gang who were tried together with Guisasola for these same facts have been acquitted, Oscar Abad Palacios and José Ramón Martínez.

The Second Section of the Criminal Chamber has handed down this sentence after the Supreme Court ordered a repeat trial against the three members of ETA, considering that the facts were not prescribed, as the Court had established to acquit them in the first instance.

Now, with a new court, as established by the Supreme Court, the Court condemns Guisasola to twenty years and one day as a necessary cooperator in a crime of murder for terrorist purposes and to pay different amounts to the 60 harmed by the damage caused by the explosion of the explosive device. The Chamber does agree 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, after analyzing the evidence taken at the oral hearing, consider it proven that Guisasola, in the first weeks of 1990, after the surveillance carried out on the policeman Ignacio Pérez Álvarez, “resolved to end his life, as an action by the terrorist organization ETA, to which he belonged, framed in the Vizcaya command”.

For the commission of the attack, the judges continue, he chose the method of the explosive device, which he had in an apartment in Bilbao and handed it over to another or other members of the terrorist organization so that they could place it 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, as occurred in this case.

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 feels the conviction that the defendant Carmen intervened decisively and decisively in the deadly action of Galdácano beyond all reasonable doubt, by manufacturing the explosive device that ended the life of Don Ignacio”. She did it, she adds, “knowing the destination of said device and by transferring it, already manufactured, to another person, so that he could install it in the optimal place to end the life of the deserving policeman.”

For the court, the defendant, therefore, “is the author for necessary cooperation, since her act, consisting of delivering the explosive device to the person who made it explode, was decisive for the reality of the act of killing, since this, without the act of the defendant Carmen, would not have existed”.

On the contrary, the Chamber acquitted the other two accused of these acts, Óscar Abad Palacios and José Ramón Martínez, considering that the self-incriminating police statements cannot be used to convict them since they did not have prosecution evidence proving their participation in the action. terrorist.