The National Court has sentenced ETA members Asier Arzalluz and Aitor Aguirrebarrena, known by the aliases of Santi y peio respectively, for their participation in , anti-Franco intellectual, journalist and columnist for the newspaper The World murdered in 2000 with four shots. The court has imposed on the two terrorists the sentence requested by the family, presented as a private accusation, compared to the 26 years of imprisonment requested by the Prosecutor’s Office. The magistrates explain that, although the accused did not do so until more than two decades after the crime and without their confession “having been accompanied by any sign of repentance or apology to the victims of the murder.”
López de Lacalle at the doors of his house, in Andoain (Gipuzkoa). The intellectual returned home minutes before 10:00, after buying newspapers and having breakfast in a bar located a few meters away. There the members of the Ttotto commandwho had already tried to kill him on three previous occasions. This small terrorist group was led by José Ignacio Guridi Lasa and operated under the orders of Francisco Javier García Gaztelu, Txapote. According to the sentence, it was Guridi Lasa who approached the columnist to “make sure” that it was him and then shot him four times at “close range.” Meanwhile, Santi He watched a few meters away and peio He was waiting for them near the local clinic, inside a red Ford van in which they fled.
JPGandul (EFE)
In 2002, the National Court was already accused of carrying out the shooting. The Ertzaintza had detained him a year before and, upon capturing him, found him the 38 caliber Arminius revolver used in the murder. In 2009, the court imposed the same prison sentence on Txapotefor capturing Guridi for the Ttotto command and order its members to end Lacalle’s life. However, until now, Santi and Peio had not been convicted. held last November against them: “Do you recognize the facts?” asked the president of the court, Judge Fernando Andreu. “I recognize them,” they both answered.
In their ruling, dated November 27, the judges of the Second Section of the Criminal Chamber highlight “the special abjection” of the crime: “When the murder was committed, as ETA’s vindication statement shows, because it was the “The victim was a journalist who gave his opinion freely and held his own ideas that were different from those of the terrorist organization ETA, trying to silence and destroy the constitutionally enshrined freedom of expression.”
