Arnaldo Otegi

Arnaldo Otegi Mondragon (Elgóibar, July 6, 1958) is a Spanish politician, current general coordinator of Euskal Herria Bildu. Of Basque independence and socialist ideology, he was previously the general secretary of Sortu and spokesman for Batasuna. In his youth he was a member of the political-military terrorist group ETA, from where he went to the military ETA to later leave the organization.

From 1995 to 2005 he was a Basque parliamentarian for Herri Batasuna and Euskal Herritarrok, declared illegal in Spain in 2003 along with Batasuna for being under the tutelage of ETA. He has been imprisoned five times; the last time, in 2009 for a crime of belonging to an armed gang in the controversial Bateragune case, a trial that in 2018 the European Court of Human Rights ruled was not fair and lacked impartiality.

Arnaldo Otegi is one of the most controversial figures in Spanish politics. Despite his initial membership in ETA, years later he influenced the end of ETA violence, definitively achieved in 2011: he participated very actively in the signing of the Estella Pact, which led ETA to declare an "unconditional and unconditional" truce. indefinite", and he also met secretly on several occasions with Jesús Eguiguren, of the Euskadi Socialist Party (PSE-EE), to facilitate a peace process that would lead to an end to the violence. Both processes ended up collapsing and Otegi received numerous criticisms for complying with ETA's guidelines after the reactivation of terrorist activity. However, Otegi has spoken out on numerous occasions in favor of an end to the violence and was a decisive figure in the process that in 2011 would lead ETA to announce the "definitive cessation of its armed activity". In 2012 he asked for "his most sincere apologies" to the victims of ETA and stated that he felt "from the heart" if from his political position he had added "an iota of pain, suffering or humiliation to the families of the victims"., spoke in favor of the dissolution of ETA, which occurred in May 2018.

Some politicians, among others the former President of the Government of Spain José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (PSOE), Pablo Iglesias (Podemos) or Josu Erkoreka (PNV), have identified Otegi as a key element for peace in the Basque Country; and has sometimes been compared to the figure of Gerry Adams in Northern Ireland. Others, on the other hand, such as former president Mariano Rajoy (PP) or Albert Rivera (Cs), have directly rejected this statement, alluding to the numerous Otegi sentenced for apology of terrorism and collaboration with ETA.

Biography

Arnaldo Otegi was born in the Gipuzkoan town of Elgóibar, in the Basque Country, where he met Julia Arregi Gorrotxategi, whom he married and had a son, Hodei, and a daughter, Garazi.

Militancy in ETA

In 1977, he fled to France from his hometown, after discovering his links with a political-military ETA (ETA-pm) command responsible for the explosion of a gas station, armed robbery of vehicles and the assault on the government of San Sebastián, as well as several more robberies and the release of an ETA member admitted to a hospital. In February 1979, he participated in the kidnapping of the director of Michelin in Vitoria, Luis Abaitua, who remained hidden in a cave in Elgóibar for ten days. In 1983 he was arrested in France. After the division of ETA-pm, one of The sectors of said organization, known as "ETA-pm (VIII) pro-KAS" or milikis and to which Otegi belonged, joined the military ETA in February 1984. On July 8, In 1987, after being arrested again in France, Otegi was handed over to the Spanish authorities at the Hendaye border post.

In January 1989, the Basque-French member of ETA-pm Françoise Marhuenda accused Otegi of the 1979 kidnapping of then-UCD Secretary General Javier Rupérez, but he was acquitted as he was not identified by Rupérez as one of his captors., on February 21 of the same year, he was found guilty of the kidnapping of Abaitua and sentenced to six years in prison. In October 1990 he was provisionally released after having served half his sentence. That same year he was also acquitted of the attack and attempted kidnapping of the then UCD deputy Gabriel Cisneros. In September 1991 he entered prison to finish serving the sentence for the kidnapping of Abaitua until May 1993. During his stay in prison He graduated in Philosophy and Letters.

Herri Batasuna

In the regional elections of October 23, 1994, he ran in seventh place on the Herri Batasuna (HB) lists for Guipúzcoa, without obtaining the act of parliamentarian when he obtained six seats on the HB list for this constituency. On September 27, 1995, he acceded to the Basque Parliament by replacing the deputy Begoña Arrondo.

In November 1997, a Supreme Court ruling sentenced the members of the HB National Board to seven years in prison for having tried to broadcast a video of ETA in the publicity spot for its candidacy for the 1996 general elections. Due to the imminent imprisonment of the members of the National Table, Joseba Permach and Otegi were elected members of the new provisional leadership of HB.

On September 12, 1998, Otegi participated in the signing of the Estella Pact, which proposed solving the so-called «Basque conflict» by starting a dialogue process without «preconditions» and a second phase that would require an «absence of all expressions of violence»; proposals that led to an ETA truce. In the regional elections of October 1998, he was a candidate for Guipúzcoa for the Euskal Herritarrok (EH) platform promoted by HB. EH obtained the best results of the nationalist left in ten years, becoming the third political force in the Basque Country and, after the 1999 regional elections, also the third in Navarra.

In August 2000, the prosecutor's office of the High Court of Justice of the Basque Country filed a complaint against Otegi for apology of terrorism as a result of his statements in honor of four ETA members who died days before when a bomb exploded on them that they were transporting in a vehicle. This complaint was finally filed.

Batasuna

In 2001 HB was refounded in Batasuna, an organization of which he was elected spokesperson. That same year, Otegi began to meet secretly and informally with Jesús Eguiguren, then president of the Euskadi Socialist Party (PSE), in the Txillarre farmhouse in Elgóibar. These meetings, which would last until 2006, served as the starting point for the failed peace process with ETA of the socialist government of Rodríguez Zapatero.

Batasuna was outlawed in 2003 under the recently approved Party Law; however, this did not prevent him from continuing to participate in public events, since in Spain the illegalization of a political party does not imply the suppression of the individual rights of its members. In November 2004, Otegi participated in a Batasuna event at the Anoeta velodrome where he proposed the creation of "dialogue tables" to resolve the Basque conflict. These statements generated great controversy and talk began of possible negotiations between the Spanish government and ETA.

Legal proceedings

On May 26, 2005, in the middle of the debate on the government's negotiation with ETA, Otegi entered pretrial detention accused of belonging to an armed gang in the case of the herriko tabernas. Two days later he left jail after posting a bail of 400,000 euros.

In November 2005, he was sentenced by the Supreme Court to one year in prison for insulting the Crown, due to statements he had made in 2003 and for which he had been acquitted in March. During a visit by Juan Carlos In Vizcaya, days after the arrest of ten workers from the newspaper Euskaldunon Egunkaria, Otegi had declared that "the King of Spain is the supreme commander of the Spanish Army, that is, the one responsible for the torturers and the that protects torture and imposes its monarchical regime on our people through torture and violence". The execution of the sentence was suspended in 2006 by the Superior Court of Justice of the Basque Country.

On March 29, 2006, Judge Fernando Grande-Marlaska ordered his imprisonment, accused of inducing more than one hundred violent acts in a strike held in the Basque Country and Navarre on the 9th of that same month. He was released from prison a few days after depositing 250,000 euros of bail.

On April 27, 2006, he was sentenced to fifteen months in prison by the National Court, for glorifying terrorism, due to his participation in the tribute to the historic member of ETA José Miguel Beñarán, Argala, in December 2003. The sentence was appealed, which prevented his entry into prison until the resolution of the appeal.

Between September 20 and November 10, 2006, while the Spanish government was negotiating with ETA in Geneva (Switzerland) and Oslo (Norway), at the same time Arnaldo Otegi and Rufi Etxeberria, representing the outlawed Batasuna, met regularly at the Sanctuary of Loyola with Jesús Eguiguren and Rodolfo Ares, for the Euskadi Socialist Party (PSE), and with Josu Jon Imaz and Iñigo Urkullu, for the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), in order to reach a political pre-agreement to promote the peace process. However, these negotiations did not prosper.

In March 2007, Otegi was acquitted of a crime of apology for terrorism, when the prosecutor of the National Court withdrew the accusation, after the Supreme Court ordered the annulment of a sentence imposed by the Superior Court of Justice of the Country Vasco and the repetition of the trial, for his participation in the burial in 2001 of the alleged ETA militant Olaia Castresana.

On June 8, 2007, he entered the Martutene prison to serve his sentence for paying homage to Argala after its confirmation by the Supreme Court. He was released from prison on June 30, 2007. August 2008 stating that he was committed to "dialogue and negotiation" to resolve the "Basque conflict". During his imprisonment there were no significant mobilizations to demand his release. Otegi had led a discreet life in prison and had dedicated himself to learning English, keeping his distance from the strategy of the ETA leadership. According to Luis Rodríguez Aizpeolea, analyst of the newspaper El País, the T4 attack, which led to the rupture of the dialogue with the Government, marked the turning point in Otegi's relationship with ETA, deeming the violence and being very critical from prison with the murder of Isaías Carrasco. Otegi would have already begun his criticism of weapons some time before with an analysis of the Basque and international context, but after the attack he would begin to bet on the new strategy of accumulation of the independence forces around the so-called "sovereignty pole", which would materialize in 2011 in the Bildu electoral coalition.

In January 2009, the High Court of Justice of the Basque Country closed the case against, among others, Otegi and the Lendakaris Patxi López (PSE) and Juan José Ibarretxe (PNV), for meeting in 2006 and 2007; but in March of that same year he was accused of glorifying terrorism for his participation in the 2004 political act at the Anoeta velodrome.

Bateragune Case

On October 13, 2009, Otegi was once again arrested along with the former general secretary of the LAB union Rafael Díez Usabiaga and other leaders of the nationalist left, being accused in the "Bateragune case" for trying to reorganize the leadership of Batasuna. These arrests generated one of the largest protest concentrations of those years in the Basque Country, which was called by the Basque union majority and supported by all the nationalist parties. In turn, the nationalist left made public an internal debate document prepared for the detainees that he bet on "the use of exclusively political and peaceful means". In prison, Otegi began a hunger strike in January 2010.

Pending the cause for which he was arrested, he was also tried for glorifying terrorism for his participation in 2005 in an act of homage to José María Sagardui, Gatza, the ETA prisoner who had been incarcerated the longest. The National Court sentenced him to two years in prison and sixteen years of disqualification in March 2010; although said sentence was annulled by the Supreme Court in February 2011, ordering a repeat trial with different magistrates when appreciating "a prejudice about the guilt" of Otegi. A few months earlier, in December 2010, the National Court acquitted him of a similar crime for his participation in the political act of Anoeta in 2004, considering that he did not praise ETA, but rather defended "the convenience and the need for a process of dialogue and negotiation for the resolution of the conflict in a peaceful and democratic manner".

In mid-March 2011, the European Court of Human Rights sentenced the Spanish State to pay the sum of 20,000 euros as moral damages for "violating Otegi's freedom of expression" in the case of "insults to the Rey". In July of that year, the National Court acquitted him of the crime of glorifying terrorism for the tribute to Sagardui, after repeating the trial in another room. Otegi assured that in his rallies he had never called "violent action."

In September 2011, the National Court sentenced Otegi and Díez Usabiaga to ten years in prison and ten years of disqualification from holding public office for "belonging to ETA as leaders" through the coordination body called Bateragune ('meeting point'). During the trial, Otegi flatly rejected the violence of ETA, an organization that had already declared a "permanent, general and verifiable" ceasefire in January and that in October announced the "definitive cessation of armed activity".

Later, in May 2012, the Supreme Court reduced their prison sentence to six and a half years, considering that there was no solid argument to consider them leaders of said organization and ruling out their participation in Bateragune, a body linked to to Ekin. Although, he considered accredited that they were part of ETA and followed its guidelines to design a strategy of accumulation of sovereignist forces. For this same reason, the other three defendants also saw their sentence ratified, with a certain reduction in sentence The sentence was not unanimous and two of the five magistrates issued individual opinions, one in favor of free acquittal and the other in favor of annulment of the trial. The so-called "Bateragune case" aroused various criticisms from Basque political parties, with the exception of of PP and UPyD.

On June 21, 2012, at the press conference held the day after Sortu's legalization by the Constitutional Court, the lawyer Iñigo Iruin requested the release of Otegi and the other four convicted because, according to what he declared, " It is a notorious fact that the five convicted in the summary are at the origin of the entire process of reflection from which the new political and organizational project of the Abertzale left arises, which materialized in Sortu", and announced the filing of a appeal for amparo before the Constitutional Court.

On October 14, 2012, he was placed incommunicado, as a precautionary measure, after a recording of him at a Euskal Herria Bildu rally was made public the day before, in which he called to “empty the jails and occupy the streets.” to defend our rights."

He was elected general secretary of Sortu after its founding congress on February 23, 2013, a position that became vacant while he was in prison. In April 2013, together with the then president of the Socialist Party of Euskadi (PSE) Jesús Eguiguren, he was awarded the Gernika Prize for Peace and Reconciliation for "his contribution to achieving Peace in Euskal Herria".

In May 2013, the Constitutional Court admitted his appeal for amparo for the "Bateragune case" and in July of that year he was excluded by the National Court from the trial on the financing of the herriko tabernas, considering that there had already been He has been tried and convicted of the crimes he was facing in this case. Finally, in July 2014, the Constitutional Court rejected his appeal for amparo by seven votes to five.

Shows of support and requests for release

On March 24, 2015, an international campaign was presented in the European Parliament to demand his release, which was joined by prominent personalities, such as former presidents José Mujica (Uruguay), Fernando Lugo (Paraguay) and José Manuel Zelaya (Honduras), the Nobel Peace Prize winners Mairead Maguire, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel and Desmond Tutu, the philosopher Noam Chomsky, the sociologist James Petras, the Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Walker, the Afro-descendant activist Angela Davis, the writer and filmmaker Tariq Ali, the Oscar-winning actor Haskell Wexler, former United States Attorney General William Ramsey Clark, former political leaders Julio Anguita (IU), Jesús Eguiguren (PSE) and Josep Lluis Carod Rovira (ERC), the general secretary of Podemos in Andalusia Teresa Rodríguez, the leader of the Castilian Left Doris Benegas, the parliamentarians Joan Tardà (ERC) and David Fernàndez (CUP), as well as representatives of the Galician Nationalist Bloc and IU MEPs such as Mari na Albiol, from Syriza like Dimitrios Papadimoulis, from the Portuguese Left Bloc like Marisa Matías, from the German Die Linke, from the Swedish Left Party or the Scottish National Party. Even Baltasar Garzón, the judge who sent him to prison for the "Bateragune case", was in favor of his release.

Likewise, on October 17, 2015, several thousand people supported a demonstration in San Sebastián to demand the release of Otegi and Díez Usabiaga after the release of the other three convicted of the "Bateragune case". On November 26, the The Basque Parliament ruled in this same sense with the votes in favor of PNV and EH Bildu.

On March 1, 2016, Otegi was released from the Logroño prison after serving his sentence in full. In June of the same year, the French Ministry of the Interior annulled the expulsion order imposed on him in 1984.

Basque Country Bildu

After his release from prison, Euskal Herria Bildu (EH Bildu) appointed Otegi as its candidate for the presidency of the Basque Government for the 2016 regional elections, after the coalition bases so decided. On 24 On August of that year, the Guipúzcoa Provincial Electoral Board determined that he could not be a candidate because he was disqualified from passive suffrage as part of his sentence. This decision, later endorsed by the Constitutional Court by not admitting his amparo appeal, was well welcomed by the Association Victims of Terrorism and criticized by political formations such as Unidos Podemos, PNV, ERC and PDeCAT.

On June 17, 2017, he was elected general coordinator of EH Bildu at its refounding congress, for which he left the general secretary of Sortu.

Annulment of the judgment in the Bateragune case

On November 6, 2018, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the trial carried out in the so-called "Bateragune case" for which he was convicted of terrorism had not been fair due to the lack of impartiality of the magistrate who presided over the court of the National Court, while there was a precedent in which "she used expressions that implied that she had already formed an unfavorable opinion" about Otegi's guilt. In December the Constitutional Court admitted an appeal for amparo for processing against his disqualification.

On July 27, 2020, the Supreme Court annulled the judgment in the Bateragune case, after assuming the ruling of the Strasbourg Human Rights Court. With this resolution, the sentence of six and a half years of disqualification that fell on Otegi was also annulled.

On December 14 of that same year, the Supreme Court ordered the trial to be repeated, considering that the annulment of the sentence left the facts unjudged since the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights did not assess the facts that were judged. On October 28, 2021, the Constitutional Court temporarily suspended said decision until the appeal filed by the convicted was resolved.

Books about Otegi

• In 2005, Iñaki Iriondo and Ramón Sola, journalists of the newspaper Gara, published Tomorrow, Euskal Herria. Interview with Arnaldo Otegi.
• In 2012, journalist Fermín Munarriz published The time of the lights. Interview with Arnaldo Otegi.
• In 2012, Mariano Alonso and Luis F. Quintero, journalists Digital Freedom, published Otegi, the new man, edited by Sepha.
• In 2015, journalist Antoni Batista published Otegi, the force of peace, edited by La Campana.