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| Europe |
| Key Spanish prosecutor removed from job |
| 2006-02-03 |
| Spain‘s top law enforcement official said Thursday he removed a key prosecutor from his job for failing to obey orders in important cases, including one involving al-Qaida suspects due to be released from jail soon because of a backlog in the courts. During his 26 years at the court — which deals with terrorism cases and crimes against the state — he has waged a dogged fight against the armed Basque separatist group ETA, prosecuting major cases against it. Three conservative newspaper editorials — in El Mundo, La Razon and ABC — and an association of victims of ETA attacks also charged that the government got rid of Fungairino to pave the way for such talks with ETA and a possible peace deal to end the 30-year-old conflict in the Basque region. The government already has offered ETA negotiations if it renounces violence. "Patience has a limit," Conde-Pumpido said at a news forum with politicians and reporters. This is because under Spanish law, a person who is convicted of a crime and appeals only has to serve half the jail sentence if the appeal is not ruled on before the sentence reaches that halfway point. By now, some of those 11 are at or near the halfway point of the jail time they must serve and the severely backlogged Supreme Court has yet to rule on their appeals, meaning Spain has to release them. Two already have been released for this reason. But Fungairino failed to warn the Supreme Court in the recent case, the attorney general said. Fungairino, 59, is something of a character in Spanish legal circles. He said the only thing he watched on television were BBC documentaries. The newspaper El Pais reported Thursday he also upset the attorney general recently by failing to advise him of a judge‘s warning that the probe into the Madrid attacks was going so slowly that some suspects might by law have to be released from custody before a trial could be held. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |