BY JANET POST
MIAMI - On June 17, U.S. Federal District judge Ted
Bandstra ruled that Ramon Aldasoro Magunacelaya should be
extradited to Spain. Defense attorneys are considering an
appeal.
Aldasoro is the first pro-independence Basque political refugee to be arrested in the United States. He had been a Toyota salesman in Homestead, Florida, for a year and a half, until his arrest on Dec. 1, 1997. The FBI's joint terrorism task force carried out the arrest that was coordinated between the Spanish police agency Interpol and the U.S. State Department. The 40-year-old Aldasoro is imprisoned at Miami's Federal Detention Center.
He has been framed up by Spanish authorities for allegedly aiding in the killing of a retired Spanish air force general and two cops in a mortar attack on a civil guards' barracks in 1988. Madrid claims that he is a member of the ETA (Basque Homeland and Liberty), which fights for the independence of the Basque country from Spain. At the May 28 extradition hearing of Aldasoro the political question of independence for the Basque country came to the fore.
The Basque people are an oppressed nation of about 3 million people in northern Spain and southern France. About 25 percent of the people in the Basque country, or Euskal Herria, speak Basque, although it is not recognized as an official language by either the French or Spanish governments. The unemployment rate is 21 percent. In a 1978 plebiscite the majority of the Basque people voted against the Spanish constitution, which rejected self-determination for Euskal Herria. The pro-independence political party Herri Batasuna (Popular Unity) is the third-largest in the Basque country. Demonstrations have recently been held in the Basque village of Otxandio in support of Aldasoro.
At the hearing defense attorney Fletcher Peacock explained that all of the Basque "witnesses" who initially implicated Aldasoro did so under torture and have recanted their testimony regardless of likely repercussions. All of these witnesses are in prison in Spain.
Witness and ETA member Juan Carlos Arruti Azpitarte recanted his testimony on Sept. 21, 1989 - one day after it was given. Peacock said that when Arruti refused to sign a statement against Aldasoro he was taken to "the hills" - the civil guard barracks - beaten in the head, tortured with electrodes, and had a plastic bag placed over his head to cause near-suffocation.
In her recantation Miren Pilare López de Luzuriaga said that her original statement and misidentification of Aldasoro in a lineup was after five days in isolation with no light, and beatings. In one torture session she was forced to listen to her husband's screams as he was hung out of a window by guardsmen who threatened to drop him.
ETA member Viguri Camino was interrogated while blindfolded, handcuffed, and shackled on the trip to the court in Madrid and had no legal representation during the interrogation.
Of these recantations the prosecution said, "Claiming they were tortured is a `method' used by the ETA," and that the recantations are "alleged" since they are not notarized. But prisoners in Spain are not allowed to come out and give a notarized statement, Peacock said.
Also in the hearing, the prosecution and defense debated whether cases of Basque pro-independence fighters would fall under the "political offense exemption" clause of the 1970 extradition treaty between Spain and the United States.
The only witness to testify at the hearing was defense witness Edgardo Rotman, a professor at the University of Miami Law School. Rotman said that the struggle for self- determination in the Basque country was a legitimate ongoing political struggle and that acts carried out as part of that struggle, whether armed or not, should be considered as exemptions from extradition.
Janet Post is a member of International Association of Machinists Local 368. Rollande Girard contributed to this article.