Torture In The Basque Country

international | rights, freedoms and repression | news report Sunday July 28, 2013 17:21 by Diarmuid Breatnach - Personal Capacity

Torture is a regular part of the repression suffered by Basque activists

Torture of Basque poltical activists is endemic in the Spanish state. Of the 21,000 Basques arrested since 1960, 10,000 have been tortured, according to a Basque historical memory organisation in a recent statement. Some of the tortures, in particular of women, have included sexual humiliation, stripping, sexual handling and penetration by objects.

Beatriz Etxebarria upon her arrest -- her sexual torture began that day

TORTURE IN THE BASQUE COUNTRY

Torture is a regular part of the repression suffered by Basque activists

Torture of Basque poltical activists is endemic in the Spanish state. Of the 21,000 Basques arrested since 1960, 10,000 have been tortured, according to a Basque historical memory organisation. Some of the tortures, in particular of women, have included sexual humiliation, stripping, sexual handling and penetration by objects.

«I hear the screams of other detainees being tortured …. They strip me naked …. the Police Commissioner repeats that he is going to rape me …. »

GARA, bilingual newspaper of the Basque broad pro-Independence Left on May 1st republished the detailed torture account of Beatriz Etxebarria Caballero, first published in its 10th March issue of 2011. The Basque activist was arrested on March 1st 2011 and is now a prisoner in Cordoba jail. GARA republished the account this year after a statement by the EU Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) accusing the Spanish Guardia Civil of attempting to obstruct officials of the Committee. [An English translation of Beatriz Etxebarria's full statement detailing the torture is available on https://www.facebook.com/dublinbasque?ref=tn_tnmn posted 10thJune 2013].

According to Beatriz, the Guardia Civil broke down her door at 4am on the 10th March 2011. She got up in her underwear; they grabbed her by the hair and dragged her into her sitting room. “Wait until you see what the next five days are going to be like” some said while others searched her home.

Under the Spanish state's “anti-terror legislation”, detainees may be held for up to five days incommunicado, i.e without access to friend, family, lawyer or their own doctor. Most Basque political detainees go through this and many “confessions” have been signed on the fourth or fifth day, only to be withdrawn in court on the sixth, alleging they were gained through torture. No matter, the detainees are normally sentenced to prison anyway. A number of human rights organisations, including international ones such as Amnesty International, have asked the Spanish state to end incommunicado detention and also to video-tape the interviews; so far the state has declined to accede to these requests.

She was blindfolded and pushed into a land rover, she continues her testimony, and then later transferred to a smaller car. There she met the man who introduced himself as “the Police Commissioner”, who screams at her that he's a soldier and trained to kill. The Guardia Civil are actually a gendarmerie; they are classified as military and live in barracks.

She was being driven to Madrid and on they way, they cuffed and hit her around the head,telling her that she'd better “talk”. She is given a plastic bag to hold – it is a reminder of what is to come if the prisoner doesn't “cooperate”: repeated partial asphyxiation through placing the bag over the head and holding it closed, depriving the victim of air.

So far this is pretty standard behaviour, if one is to judge by the hundreds of torture testimonies and arrest accounts gathered by lawyers and human rights bodies in the Basque Country in recent years.

However, on the journey there is somewhat of a deviation from the usual: the“Commissioner” threatens to stop the car, throw her in the snow and rape her; he takes off his jacket and begins to rub his upper body against Beatriz Etxebarria's breasts. The other Guardia Civil in the back of the car appears to be trying to calm the“Commissioner” down; however he threatens her too.

She is subjected to the plastic bag suffocation twice on the way to Madrid.

“In the police station,” Etxebarria continues, “there are different rooms: in one I can hear the screams of the other detainees and there is another that is further down that gives me the feeling of being very isolated, and there the treatment is even worse. The first (room) I will call the «hard room» and the other the «very hard room».” After being left alone in her cell for awhile, she is taken to the Prosecutor to see what she will tell him; according to her, she tells him she is being tortured and he orders her taken back to her cell.

This again, according to many detainees, is standard. The Spanish state has been found guilty a number of times in the European Court, not of torture, for which the Court says there is no evidence, but for failure to investigate the claims of torture. The latest Basque to have such a judgement in his favour was Martxelo Otamendi in 2012. He was a reporter for Egunkaria, the first Basque-language daily newspaper,closed down by the Spanish state in 2003. Otamendi alleged he had been tortured in 2004, as did three others of Egunkaria's staff, all of whom were found not guilty of all charges in 2010. Otamendi was awarded €20,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damages and €4,000 in respect of costs and expenses, all to be paid by the Spanish state.

When Beatriz was in the Prosecutor's office, the blindfold was removed and she noted that it was 8.30 pm on the first day of her detention. There were possibly another four to go, in the hands of the Guardia Civil in their barracks in Madrid, without access to anyone she could trust.

Later, she is again blindfolded and brought from her cell to “the hard room” and from there she can hear other detainees screaming. The police wet her hands and she hears the kind of noise she associates with electric discharge. This too would frighten most Basques. All of them know that the Spanish police and military have used electric shock torture in the past. Also, whether they were even alive then or not, that in 1981the body of Basque militant Joxe Arregi, who died in a Spanish police station, was seen to be covered in burns and bruises. Nor was he the only Basque militant to die in police custody.

Being repeatedly told to “talk”, according to Beatriz, they begin to strip her until she is completely naked. They throw water over her. Again she hears the noise she associates with electric discharge. Then the plastic bag– another two episodes of near-asphyxiation. They threaten to put her in a water bath and hold her under.

“They make me kneel on a kind of stool. They put some vaseline in my anus and my vagina. They insert an object a little bit.” This theme of sexual torture, stripping, touching, violation of anus and/or vagina has come up in a number of Basque torture testimonies – nearly always of women, usually young, occasionally of known gay men. One Basque woman related how the barrel of a pistol had been inserted into her vagina; she was told that if she struggled the gun might go off and it would be her own fault.

Finally, she is wrapped up in a blanket (so bruises won't show) and beaten, then tossed around between her torturers, before being brought back to her cell. Only two days have passed.

The next day, guards take her to the Prosecutor's office, where she again tells him she is being tortured. In her testimony she reported his attitude as “negative”.

Later, the“Commissioner” collects her and brings her to the “very hard cell”. “There, he strips me again. He grabs me by the hair and gives me blows to the head and shouts in my ear that he is a soldier,that he is trained to kill and says 'I am going to destroy your insides so you cannot have any little ETA guerrillas' ”.

Back to her cell eventually and after that again to the Prosecutor. Having seen his attitude on the previous visit, she tells him nothing.

“At the interrogations there were always a lot of people. Once I counted up to seven different voices. They threatened me constantly with (harm to) my partner (who I could hear being tortured). They also threatened to arrest my brother ….”

On the penultimate day, the “Commissioner” strips her once more. “He throws a blanket on the ground, shouts that they are going to rape me, once more. I sense that he is starting to take off his clothes, I hear how he takes off his belt. Then the one they call Garmendia tries to pacify him, takes him out of the room and I can hear them talking. Garmendia enters the room again and tells me to promise him that I am going to make a statement.”

The final day Beatriz remembers “about six interrogation sessions.” She makes the second police statement on Saturday at 5:40am. “Afterwards, they don´t strip me anymore and the aggression is less, they even ask me if I want to see Iñigo (her partner, who was also arrested and tortured). The threats do not cease until arriving at the National Court. In the van, El Comisario, who is seated at my side, tells me that I have to ratify my declaration in front of the Judge.”

During the whole incommunicado period, except when she was brought to the Prosecutor,Beatriz relates having eyes covered with different blindfolds. This has been reported by every Basque detainee. “There was one of latex that had a kind of powder which would leave me blind, they said, if I opened my eyes. I did notice that when they removed it (to go to the Prosecutor) my eyes itched for a while. When I was with El Comisario they put another blindfold on me made of a velvet-like material.”

Brought before the judge, Beatriz immediately retracted her statement and stated that she had been tortured. She went to jail anyway, for 31years, accused of “collaboration with ETA.” In common with so many others, no investigation of her torture allegations has been recorded.

THE EU's COMMITTEE FOR THE PREVENTION OF TORTURE ACCUSES THE GUARDIA CIVIL OF OBSTRUCTING THEIR ACCESS TO THE CELLS
The report of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) about its visit to the Spanish State in 2011 reveals another interesting episode. The Guardia Civil tried to prevent the delegation having access to the Guzmán el Bueno barracks in Madrid, that in which Beatriz Etxebarria was held incommunicado.

The delegation complained about the problems it encountered in order to gain access to the Detention Unit of the Information Service of the Guardia Civil at its main address, in the Guzmán el Bueno street of Madrid. This is the place about which the worst allegations of torture have been made in recent times, including specifically the sexual violation in the cells and interrogation rooms referred to by the young Bilbao woman Beatriz Etxebarria (whose testimony is also included in the CPT report).

“For more than an hour,” the report states on page 10, “officials of the Guardia Civil refused access to the zone of detention, stating that the building was not in use. Given that practically all the people detained who are held incommunicado are brought to this place, this argument is not valid” – (“not believable” would have been more accurate). The report goes on to state that the Guardia Civil indicated to the European delegates that there were no keys to the building. Finally, “the delegation managed to gain access via a back door, that a cleaner opened from inside”.

Moreover, “The delegation of the CPT encountered the same problems with gaining access to these places during its visit in 2007 and nothing had been done to prevent a re-occurrence of this situation”. One of the CPT's recommendations is that it hopes “that the Spanish authorities now adopt the necessary measures to guarantee that this situation does not repeat itself on future visits”.

THE GUARDIA CIVIL SAID THAT THERE WERE NO KEYS AVAILABLE
The Spanish Government devoted more than two pages to attempts to explain the situation. It argued that it was a case of a justifiable delay in that, on the one hand, the building was undergoing renovation and that, on the other hand, as there were no detainees at that moment, the keys were in the Information Office, situated in Barajas, 14kilometres away. It failed to explain how a cleaner could be inside at work without the keys being available.

When the European delegation eventually did gain access to the Guardia Civil's central station, they found that “the eight cells designed for single occupancy continued to have no access to natural light,had insufficient ventilation and artificial illumination.” It noted that in 2007 it had been informed that these were to be improved but that this had not happened. For this reason, four years later, the CPT once again insisted that these cells must be renovated “without further delay” and requires to be informed of progress in three months' time.

UN COMMITTEE FINDS ANOTHER BASQUE WOMAN'S TORTURE COMPLAINT "BELIEVABLE" AND CALLS FOR "AN MPARTIAL INVESTIGATION, THE PUNISHMENT OF THE OFFENDERS AND THE COMPENSATION OF THE VICTIM"

On June 1st,the United Nations Committee of Human Rights published an opinion of major importance in connection with a complaint of torture filed by another female Basque citizen, Mrs. Maria Atxabal.

The victim had been arrested in June 1996 and held incommunicado by the Guardia Civil on charges of collaborating with armed groups, of which she was later acquitted. During the three days of her arrest, she claimed to have been kept naked and hooded, subjected to long sessions of interrogation without access to legal counsel, while suffering beatings and threats of rape to her and to her daughter, which they had her believe they had also arrested along with her husband.

The medical report of the Bilbao courts stated that the complainant "has a post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of experiencing inhumane and degrading treatment" during her detention. The effects are considered to be permanent.

After analyzing the Spanish State's allegations and the evidence presented, the Committee found that the victim's story is consistent and detailed, and that the damage is causally related to the way she was treated in police custody. The Committee stated that, given the vulnerability of the arrested person who is held incommunicado, there were “strong presumptions of fact" that have not been disproved by the State. They concluded that the facts show a violation of the right of the citizen to be free from torture.

The report points to the duties to safeguard the rights enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which in their opinion, the administrative and judicial mechanisms failed to guarantee. An investigation that had been specifically requested by the full City Council of Bilbao, the Basque trade unions ELA and LAB,as well as by the Spanish unions CCOO and UGT, along with agencies such as Prison Ministry, Elkarri, Action for Peace and a significant number of social organizations in the area where the victim worked in response to drug users, had not been carried out. The Committee said that the State did not provide this lady -- and should do so as soon as possible -- with an impartial, effective and complete investigation, the prosecution and punishment of those responsible, and full compensation for the damage caused, including the cost of on-going specialized medical treatment.

WHERE TO FROM HERE?

The Spanish state, in common with other imperialist states, has a long history of torture, both of its own citizens and of people in its colonies or lands it had invaded. In the late 1940sor early 1950s, it employed the use of electrical torture against the Western Sahara resistance (later adopted by the French against the Algerians and others). In more modern times, Franco's military forces and the fascist Falange used torture during their overthrow of the Popular Front Government (the Spanish Civil War) and in suppression of democratic, socialist and and national (Basque, Catalan) resistance afterwards.

The state's Transition from dictatorship to 'democracy' after the death of Franco did not interrupt the use of torture which continued, particularly in areas where the resistance was stronger – and none was stronger than that in the southern Basque Country. In 1962, Amnesty International issued its first annual report and criticised the Spanish state for using torture, which it has done in every annual report since. More than 1,000 Basques, nearly half the number of arrested, have been tortured since 1950, reports Basque human rights and historical memory organisation Euskal Memoria Fundazoia (www.euskalmemoria.com).

The Spanish state rejects all accusations of torture and says the allegations are programmed by “ETA and its supporters”. And it routinely refuses to -- or at least defers -- making any changes to its procedures in order to make torture more difficult to carry out, for example by ceasing the five days incommunicado provision in the state's 'anti-terror' legislation or in videoing interrogation sessions.

Although their declarations may be of some encouragement to the victims, it is clear that condemnations by international human rights organisations on on their own are insufficient pressure to effect any significant change in the behaviour of the Spanish state. The big powers, themselves directly accused also of endemic abuses of human rights, see no reason to apply pressure to the Spanish state and, since the formulation of the “war on terror” and its leadership by the USA, unchallenged in its supremacy as world superpower, even states with a certain record of human rights work have become actively complicit or silent about torture and other abuses of human rights, particularly in Europe and in the USA.

In the absence of any strong and consistent campaign inside and outside the Spanish state against torture there, it is difficult to foresee any real change in the near or even medium-term future to a scenario of continuing resistance by the Basque activists along with continuing repression – and torture – by the Spanish state.

Ends
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