Francisco Mujika Garmendia

Francisco Mujika Garmendia (Villafranca de Ordizia, Guipúzcoa, November 19, 1953), alias Pakito, is a historical member of the terrorist group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) and former leader of the same between 1987 and 1992.

He was the leader of the band in the bloodiest era of the terrorist group, with the attacks with the highest number of victims, such as the Hipercor attack (1987) or the attack against the Vich barracks house (1991). In March 1992 he and other members of the ETA leadership were arrested by the Civil Guard in the French town of Bidart. The National Court sentenced him in 2003 to 2,354 years in prison for the attack against the Zaragoza barracks house perpetrated in 1987..

Biography

Activity in ETA

He was born in Villafranca de Ordizia, in the province of Guipúzcoa. He joined ETA during his adolescence, initially dealing with unarmed tasks such as accounting or external contacts. He had some participation in the preparations for the so-called Operation Ogre, which in 1973 ended the life of Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, president of the government whose death had a decisive influence on the decline of the Franco regime.

After the attack, he took refuge for the first time in the French Basque Country, from where he returned a few months later to take charge of the organization's structure in the town of Mondragón (Guipúzcoa). The police implicated him in various attacks, specifically in the murder of a civil guard and the machine-gunning of two others. In that same year of 1974 Francisco Mujika joined the executive committee of ETA political-military (ETA-pm), a split from ETA, and a year later in the so-called bereziak (special) commandos, in charge of the most serious terrorist actions.

He was accused of the disappearance and probable murder of the ETA-pm leader Eduardo Moreno Bergaretxe, Pertur, known for his critical positions with the Bereziak, since he was last seen in the Basque Country French on July 23, 1976 in his company and that of another member of the organization, Miguel Ángel Apalategi, Apala. Apparently Pertur would be in favor of the creation of a political party and the opening of a negotiation process with the Spanish government of Adolfo Suárez for the abandonment of the armed struggle and the reintegration of its militants, to which the bereziak were generally opposed, who would end up joining the military ETA (ETA-m), the other branch of the divided organization. However, it has never been possible to establish a "plot line" of what really happened, so this is one of the hypotheses that are being used along with the possibility that it was a far-right group, as concluded by a 2012 court order. after more than four years of research.

In 1977 he joined ETA-m, participating, within the Zaharra command, in the kidnapping and murder of the industrialist Javier Ybarra. That same year Pakito obtained the status of political refugee in France, with legal residence in Hendaye, which he lost in 1983, from which point he had to remain clandestinely in the French Basque Country. In 1984 the French authorities included him in an expulsion order issued on January 9.

He became part of the ETA leadership in 1985, after the arrest of Eugenio Etxebeste, Antxon (also from the bereziak of ETA-pm). The deportation and subsequent accidental death in Algeria of the historic Txomin Iturbe Abasolo (1986-1987) left a troika called Artapalo, of which Pakito was one, at the head of the organization. of the members, the person in charge of the military apparatus. For a long time the Spanish police thought that Artapalo was just Francisco Mujika, which is why he was cited with this nickname in many documents. Artapalo takes absolute control of the organization after the arrest, in the following two years, of another pair of historical leaders, Santiago Arrospide Sarasola, Santi Potros and Josu Urrutikoetxea Bengoetxea, Josu Ternera .

From the time of Artapalo are the bomb attack in the parking lots of the Hipercor hypermarket in Barcelona, the attempt to free five ETA militants from the Seville-2 prison by means of a fake Red Cross helicopter (thwarted by the police on January 2, 1990) and the organization of the itinerant command formed by French Basques, dismantled in April of the same year. Pakito he also participated in the attack against the Zaragoza barracks house, on November 11, 1987 in which 11 people died, 5 of them children.

Meanwhile, several search and arrest warrants had been issued against him in France for various crimes. In January 1990, a new order was issued after the discovery of a vault with 200 kg of explosives in the town of Anglet. In Spain he was sought by the judge of the National Court Baltasar Garzón as the instigator of three attacks committed by the itinerant commando and as the alleged recipient of the ransom paid by the family of industrialist Emiliano Revilla, kidnapped by the organization. In April 1990, a new operation by the French authorities attempting to arrest him failed.

Detention

The arrest finally took place on March 29, 1992 in Bidart, in a joint operation by the French police and the Spanish civil guard in which the other two members of the Artapalo collective, José Luis Álvarez Santacristina, were also arrested. < i>Txelis, responsible for the political apparatus of the organization, and Joseba Arregi Erostarbe, Fitipaldi, responsible for the logistical apparatus. A year later, the trial against him and other members of the traveling commando began at the Paris Correctional Court, which was suspended several times. On June 19, 1997 he was sentenced along with Txelis and Fitipaldi to ten years in prison for "association of criminals with terrorist purposes and illicit possession of weapons" # 3. 4;. Meanwhile, the Spanish authorities presented around twenty extradition requests.

The extradition to Spain finally took place on February 8, 2003, after a meeting between the president of the Spanish government, José María Aznar, and the French president, Jacques Chirac, in which, according to some sources, the exchange of ETA detainees was decided. for Spanish concessions to French companies.^{[citation required]} Pakito was admitted to the Soto del Real Prison.

Judgment

On June 2, 2003, the Second Section of the Criminal Chamber of the National Court sentenced Pakito and Joseba Arregi Erostarbe, Fitipaldi, to 2,354 years in prison each. /i>, for the attack against the Zaragoza barracks house, perpetrated in 1987.

In August 2004 Pakito and five other imprisoned ETA members sent a letter to the leadership of ETA in which they requested the end of the armed struggle, considering it impossible to maintain in the current circumstances and counterproductive for the objectives of the organization, and advocated peaceful ways based on institutional participation and social mobilization. The letter was leaked to the Navarrese Diario de Noticias in November of the same year, and ETA's response came in July 2005, expelling its signatories from the organization.