MADRID (AFP) – A Spanish court on Wednesday closed a probe into the alleged role of a former Basque separatist group leader in the 1997 murder of a politician that traumatised Spain, citing the statute of limitations.
A judge in July 2022 formally named Maria Soledad Iparraguirre, a member of the now-defunct armed Basque separatist group ETA, as a suspect on charges of “terrorist kidnapping and murder” after she was identified in a police report as a leader in the ETA’s executive committee at the time of the assassination.
The decision was announced almost 25 years after ETA militants snatched Miguel Angel Blanco, a local councillor with the right-wing Popular Party (PP), on July 10, 1997.
They gave the government 48 hours to meet their demands but when the deadline expired, they shot the 29-year-old twice in the head and dumped him. He died a day later.
His murder shocked Spain, sparking mass nationwide protests that ended up being a turning point in the fight against the ETA.
The police report said Iparraguirre, alias “Anboto”, along with two other members of the ETA’s executive at the time, had “sufficient power” to ensure that Blanco was not kidnapped and to “prevent” his execution and “order his release”.
But Spain High Court, the country’s top criminal court, dropped its probe, arguing too much time has passed since her alleged crimes were committed.
The court said that while Spanish law was reformed in 2010 so that the statute of limitations no longer applies to “terrorist crimes resulting in death”, this could not be applied retroactively to crimes dating from 1997. Iparraguirre and the other two members of the ETA’s executive are now in their 60s and have spent several years behind bars for the bloodshed committed while part of the group.
The ETA is estimated to have killed 853 people during its decades-long campaign for Basque independence, which began in 1959 under the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco. The group announced a permanent ceasefire in 2011 and formally disbanded in 2018.
