Madrid - The Spanish Supreme Court yesterday accepted the case for increasing the sentences imposed by a lower court on four Civil Guards and a Socialist Party leader for the kidnapping and murder of two ETA members, writes Paddy Woodworth.
Rejecting the appeals of Gen Enrique Rodriguez Galindo, former Civil Governor Julen Elgorriaga, and three of their subordinates, the court increased each sentence by four years. In the most notorious of the "dirty war" cases dating from the 1980s, Galindo and Elgorriaga had been sentenced to 67 years each in April 2000, for ordering the illegal detention and killing of Joxean Lasa and Joxe Zabala.
The two young men were abducted from France, tortured in a palace in San Sebastian for several weeks, and then driven to Alicante where they were shot and buried in quicklime.
Other senior Socialists active in the so-called GAL death squads were pardoned by the centre-right government earlier this year, and supporters of Galindo are campaigning for similar indulgence for Galindo, regarded as a hero in some sectors of the armed forces. However, such a move would outrage human rights activists and Basque nationalists.