 Spain's Socialist government yesterday sparked controversy by allowing Iñaki de Juana Chaos, a hunger-striking prisoner from the armed Basque separatist group Eta, to go home. An emaciated De Juana, who was responsible for 25 killings in the 1980s, was sent back to his native Basque country after serving less than half of a three-year sentence for terrorist threats.
| Three years for threats, another dozen for killing 25 people 20 years ago. And now he's virtually home free. |
He had been on hunger strike for 114 days and, reduced to a skeletal wreck, was being force-fed by doctors after being strapped to a hospital bed in Madrid.
| I thought force-feeding was against the Geneva Convention -- last time I checked on a Gitmo story it was, anyway. Guess it's different when a Euro government does it. And how the hell can he be a skeletal wreck? They didn't get the tube in early enough, and clearly weren't pouring enough down it. |
"If I had not made this decision he would have died in the next few weeks," the interior minister, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, said.
| That would be up to him, wouldn't it? |
Although De Juana will formally serve out the rest of his sentence under police guard at home and at a nearby hospital, the measure came as close as was possible to freeing him.
Last night he was at a hospital in San Sebastián, while police stood guard at the doors and supporters gathered outside. The Basque separatist leader Juan Maria Olano, after visiting De Juana in hospital, told journalists that the prisoner had given up his hunger strike.
| Why isn't Olano in prison with a tube down his gullet? |
The decision provoked furious reactions from the conservative opposition People's party and the influential Association of Terrorism Victims, which have campaigned against attempts by Prime Minister José Luis RodrÃguez Zapatero to negotiate an end to Eta's four decades of violence.
"Zapatero will go down in history as the prime minister who humiliated the victims of terrorism," the People's party's general secretary, Angel Acebes, said.
| Aww, he done did that long before now. |
"The government has finally surrendered to Eta," the victims' association said in a statement.
De Juana received his prison sentence after he was deemed to have made threats in letters printed in a Basque newspaper while awaiting early release on good behaviour from a murder sentence. His 12-year sentence was reduced to three years on appeal a fortnight ago but De Juana refused to give up his hunger strike, claiming his jailing was politically motivated. He has been in prison since 1987.
| Notice De Juana didn't try this nonsense when Aznar was in charge. |
People's party leaders last week joined a march through Madrid protesting at the supreme court's decision to reduce his sentence.
His supporters had plastered walls in the Basque country with photographs that showed him strapped to a bed and being force-fed through a nasal drip.
De Juana had become one of the biggest stumbling blocks on an already accident-prone peace process that started with an Eta ceasefire last March. His decision to go on hunger strike had been criticised by some other Eta prisoners for hindering a process he claimed to support. "If he dies, it will be a big problem," one prominent Basque separatist leader told the Guardian recently.
| For him and his nasty supporters. I think Mother Gaia would have continued to rotate on her axis just fine. |
The state of the peace process, shattered by a car bomb that killed two people at Madrid airport in December, remained unclear yesterday. Eta has claimed that the ceasefire is still in place and its political allies from the banned Batasuna party have recently been praising Mr Zapatero - leading to speculation that peace is back on the agenda.
| Until they set off another bomb. That's why they're terrorists. |
Conservative Spanish news media yesterday claimed that the decision to send De Juana home, without formally freeing him, had been made by Mr Zapatero himself. Mr Zapatero refused to comment when asked by reporters yesterday.
"The state has to be humane even with those who did not act this way with their victims," Mr Pérez Rubalcaba said.
| Spoken like a good socialist. Wonder if they'd let an old Spanish fascist out of jail? |
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