Iñaki de Juana Chaos - Misplaced Pages

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José Ignacio de Juana Chaos (born 1955 in Legazpia, Guipuzcoa) better known as Iñaki de Juana Chaos, is a member of the Basque terrorist paramilitary separatist group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA or Eta). He was convicted of killing 25 people, among them civilian, women, and children in 1987 and was originally sentenced to 3,000 years in prison. As a result of complicated sentencing guidelines, he became eligible for release in late 2004 after only serving 17 years. However, a series of court appeals prevented his release by accusing him of making terrorist threats in two articles written from prison in which he made statements that clearly showed he was not eligible for reinsertion in society. According to the Spanish Constitution (paradoxically reviled by Chaos and other terrorists), reinsertion is to be considered the main objective of the penal system and thus early release is often assessed according to the degree to which the prisoner is to become a valuable member of society.
In August 2006, he started a hunger strike protesting his continued imprisonment but it ended after sixty-three days after the Spanish liberal government led by Mr. Rodríguez Zapatero got involved in the case and pushed for his early release. It should be noted that as cruel as the Spanish Constitution, state, governments, and judges are supposed to be according to ETA terrorists, Chaos enjoyed all the privileges of any prisoner under the Spanish Penal Code which include the right to a free college education and visitation from significant others as it was the case with De Juana Chaos' girlfriend at that time. Another hunger strike occurred from November 2006 until March 2007, it ended after he was moved from a hospital in Madrid to one in his home region of Guipuzcoa. After he left the hospital he was to be placed under house arrest, but on 6 June 2007, after the end of ETA's ceasefire he was sent to Aranjuez prison. On the 2nd of August 2008, de Juana Chaos was released from prison.

Background

De Juana's father, Daniel de Juana Rubio, was born in the city of Miranda de Ebro in the province of Burgos around 1908. He was a doctor who had also been a decorated military lieutenant on the Francoist side during the Spanish Civil War and was an active member of the Falange Española party. His mother, Esperanza Chaos Lloret, was born around 1924 in Tetuán, Spanish Morocco, where her father, a soldier in the Spanish Army, was stationed. De Juana thus belongs to a breed of Basque secessionist terrorists whose parents were directly involved in the Spanish army, police force, or nationalist movements their sons and grandsons claimed were opressing them. Both De Juana's father and father in law would fall in the same professional category as all of the direct victims of De Juana's bomb plots which often targeted reitred army officials, public administrators under the dictatorship, or public servants. This fact contributes to create further confusion when comparing Basque secessionism to Irish or Palestinian terrorist activities behind emancipatory movements: It is unthinkable that Michael Collins or Bobby Sands would have been born to native British soldiers or that Khaled Mashal´s father in law had been a Mossad agent.

De Juana and his brother, Altamira, grew up in mansion in Legazpi. There his father who was a doctor worked at a major steel factory where he treated the workers. The family lived next to a Civil Guard barracks and de Juana would play football with the children of the guards.

De Juana joined the military service and was even awarded a diploma from the city of Madrid in recognition of the courage he showed in a fighting a major fire in the city in 1977. After military service, he joined the Basque Police. He was promoted twice, but in 1983, he left the service. He then went across the border to France where he was involved in the clandestine ETA paramilitary group there.

On November 2, 2007 the Spanish newspaper El País published a piece which brought up even more confusion regarding De Juana's background. In it, Pablo Ordaz reported how Esperanza Chaos Lloret had been spoon-fed for months prior to her death on January 27 (she had Alzheimer's disease) by her daughter's mother in law, herself a widower whose husband was murdered by ETA in 1977. Although, Iñaki called his mother regularly, they never discussed any politics or his situation in jail. As a matter of fact, Esperanza claimed that she couldn't believe her eyes when she found out that Iñaki had been arrrested in 1987.

Activity in ETA

In the mid 1980s, de Juana was the leader of the "Madrid Commando", a terrorist cell whose main objective was to wreak havoc in Spanish society by murdering military officials, police officers, administrators, and civilians in the Madrid area. These murders are often regarded by philo-terrorists as "objectives".

12 June 1985 - machine gun vehicle killing Colonel Vicente Romero and his driver, Juan García Jiménez. After the shooting the group hid a booby trap bomb in their getaway car, which killed policeman Esteban del Amo.
29 July 1985 - military vehicle machine gunned, killing Vice-Admiral Fausto Escrigas Estrada.
9 September 1985 - a car bomb exploded in plaza de la República Argentina against a Guardia Civil van. No agents were dead, but Eugene Kent Brown, an American jogging by, was killed.
25 April 1986 - car bomb in Madrid killed five policemen (Juan Carlos González, Vicente Javier Domínguez, Juan José Catón Vázquez, Juan Mateos Pulido y Alberto Alonso Gómez)
17 June 1986 - the car of Commander Ricardo Sáenz de Ynestrillas was machine-gunned resulting in the death of the commander, a lieutenant colonel (Carlos Vesteiro Pérez) and a soldier (Francisco Casillas Martín).
14 July 1986 - car bomb in Plaza de la República Dominicana that killed 12 policemen (Jesús María Freixes, Santiago Iglesias Rodino, Carmelo B. Álamo, Miguel A. Cornejo Ros, José Calvo Gutiérrez, Andrés José Fernández Pertierra, Antonio Lancharro Reyes, José Joaquín García Ruiz, Jesús Gimeno Gimeno, Juan Ignacio Calvo Guerrero, Javier Esteban y Ángel de la Higuera López)

Prison sentence

de Juana was arrested on January 16, 1987 together with fellow terrorists Esteban Esteban Nieto, María Inmaculada Noble Goicoetxea, Antonio Troitiño Arranz, María Teresa Rojo and Cristina Arrizabalaga Vázquez. He was eventually convicted of killing 25 people. He was sentenced to 3000 years, but under the law that was in place during de Juana's trial, the maximum sentence he could serve was 30 years. The Spanish justice system has a policy called remission, which states that time can be deducted from a prisoner's sentence for exhibiting good behavior and for other factors. As de Juana could only legally serve thirty years in prison, with his earned remission being subtracted from the sentence, he should have been released on October 2004. To stop de Juana from being released, several organizations and the administration charged him with making terrorist threats, using letters (Gallizo and The Shield ) sent to newspapers (Gara and Berria) by de Juana as evidence.. Beware that these translations are not accurate.

Insults to his victims

Shortly after the murder of Sevillian PP councilman Alberto Jiménez-Berrecil and his wife Ascensión García Ortiz on January 30, 1998 De Juana wrote two letters that would later be used as tangible proof of his failure to rehabilitate and renounce violence. It should be noted that, according to Spanish law, in order to have one's sentence reduced for good behaviour these are two conditions which the panel in charge of the prisioner's assesment should take into account. De Juana wrote shortly after January 30, 1998 the following letter:

"Here in jail, their sorrow is turned into our joy and we will be the ones cracking up when this whole thing comes to an end... I am swallowing every piece of news about our latest operation in Seville. I rejoice in the disjointed faces that they all are displaying... This operation should provide me with enough nourishment for the remainder of the month. ¡Flawless! Now they are beginning to reap all the suffering that they have been sowing for decades of prisoner abuse. And all that in spite of us just being charity nuns .... The day will come, although not immediately, when we will escalate our actions to the level of the Jewish INGUN against the British, the Algerian FLN against the French, or the IRA against the British: that day we will claim victory just like they did. Here in jail, their sorrow turns into our joy and we will be the ones cracking up at the end of it all... ¿Or do they care about children when it's their's and not ours who suffer? Don't we have orphan children of our own? Don't we have children who can't visit their parents because of prisoner relocation programs? argue that it brings pain to the families and indirectly punishes them since they are forced to travel long distances in order to be able to see their convicted relatives.]

Hunger strike

On 7 August 2006, de Juana began a hunger strike to demand his release on October 4 2006, the date which he should have been released under his original sentence. He began to be force-fed (illegally under the "inhumane" Spanish Constitution that prevents anybody in the care of the government to die because of its negligence in order to prevent torture) on 20 September. He ended the hunger strike after 63 days on 9 October.

In November 2006, de Juana was sentenced to twelve years and seven months for allegedly making terrorist threats in two articles of opinion and he resumed his hunger strike. In February 2007, de Juana's sentence for promoting terrorism was cut from more than 12 years, down to 3 years. On 24 February, thousands of people protested in Madrid against the ruling and requested that new laws be passed so that anybody who kills 25 people like De Juana Chaos may not walk free after a 15-year term. According to two polls, the majority of Spaniards opposed this decision.

On 2 March 2007, the director of the prison system made the decision to essentially demote de Juana to house arrest due to worries over his health. In the Spanish Penal System house arrest is to the discretion of the officials in charge of that particular case who often act upon pressure from the central government although they are under no obligation to fulfill any of these orders. Since De Juana was inflicting damage to himself through his decision to not eat, the debate focused on whether the penal system should consider De Juana's ailment comparable to terminal cancer or a similar disease for which the Spanish penal system provides a mercy exception not contemplated in other legal systems. This decision was criticized by the only center-right party, Partido Popular, who denounced the move as a consequence of an ongoing non-spoken agreement between the government and ETA, and an encouragement for future prisoner hunger strikes by any prisoner regardless the reasons for their imprisonment since legally, the precedent established would consider self-inflicted malnutrition or anemia a major or terminal disease.

On 1 March 2007, de Juana ended his hunger strike after 114 days, after being moved from Madrid to a hospital in the Basque Region where he enjoied his rights to visitation and was seen walking outside the hospital. He was to serve the remainder of his sentence on house arrest. On 10 March 2007, thousands of people protested in Madrid against the release of de Juana. On 6 June 2007, de Juana was sent back to prison one day after Eta said the ceasefire was to end.

Release and public outrage

Once again, on 17 July 2008, de Juana commenced his third hunger strike. This time he was protesting a decision by the Prosecutor's Office of the National Court to place a lean on an apartment which his wife owns. This will not stop him from living there, but it will stop the apartment from being sold. de Juana owes his victims €8 million (11 million USD) of which he has not paid a single penny. Irati Aranzábal, De Juana's wife, bought the apartment for eight million euros and both her and her husband must now pay a 360.000 euro mortage (500,000 USD). To add insult to injury, the apartment is located directly underneath another one in which one of ETA's victims live and in the same apartment complex as Joseba Pagazaurtundúa's mother (Joseba was the chief of the local police in Andoáin and was murdered by ETA in February 8, 2003), as well as Maria Teresa Embid and Isabel Bastida, two widows whose husbands were killed by ETA and, finally, Julio Iglesias Zamora, who was kidnapped by ETA in 1993. The flat belonged to De Juana's mother but prior to her death in 2007 she donated it to her daughter in order to avoid her son paying any money to his victims. De Juana's sister eventually sold the house to Ms. Aranzábal on July 11.

On August 2, 2008 De Juana Chaos was released from prison after serving 21 years. Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said De Jauana Chaos "generates a perfectly understandable feeling of contempt" among all citizens "and of course the head of the government". He added, "But we must respect the law."

Ireland

In September 2008, de Juana applied for a passport using an address in Dublin, Ireland. The address belonged to Jim Monaghan who was part of a group know as the Colombia three, captured in Colombia and accused of training members of Farc before fleeing and being sentenced to 17 years in absentia.

A warrant was issued by Interpol as a Spanish judge wanted de Juana to answer charges that he was "glorifying terrorism." The Irish Government pledged its support to find de Juana. On 14 November, the Police Service of Northern Ireland]] said they were looking for de Juana. de Juana's Belfast lawyer said he would appear before a Belfast court on 17 November. When he came to court his lawyer said that he would fight extradition and that the maximum sentence on the charge was less than the minimum of three years necessary for extradition. His lawyer also challenged the basis of the charge which the Spanish state said was contained in a letter allegedly written by de Juana and allegedly quoted by a supporter at a function to welcome de Juana home. The British judge said needed to know specifically what laws had allegedly been broken by de Juana and whether similar charges existed under British law. De Juan was then released on bail, with a new trial date set for December. The Spanish state representative then consulted with the group Victimas del Terorismo, a group made up of victims from all walks of life which includes relatives of ETA's most accursed enemy: the Spanish police body known as the Guardia Civil. Whether these people oppose Basque self-determination or not is irrelevant in spite of what some say since their association deals with victims of a terrorist organization which does not ask people's opinion before they bury them alive, set their bodies on fire alive and reduce them to ashes, shoots them in the back of the head, or blow up their bodies internally. Arguing that these relatives are hostile towards Basque secessionism is like arguing that Abraham Lincoln was hostile to state rights when he sent troops to Fort Sumter. Both issues are complex and yet anybody with any sense of decency knows that the essence of the American Civil War was not state rights but how those rights were being used to abuse human rights. Similarly, some of the victims affiliated with AVT have argued that ETA would not exist if it didn't have the support of a large portion of Basque society (namely pro-secessionists who may or may not be under the auspices of the MLNV or ETA) in the same way the KKK ceased to exist as a terrorist organization after Jim Crow was slowly and painfully dismantled by the federal government.

Outside of the court there were protesters both for and against de Juana. The protestors in solidarity included mainly pro-secessionist Basques and pro-IRA Irishmen and women for whom De Juana's rights were more relevant than any of the rights of those people killed by ETA since no pictures of De Juana's victims were displayed in the demonstration. Republicans in Northern Ireland have shown support for Eta and de Juana in the past, and see each others struggle as similar causes.

On January 10, 2009, de Juana participated in a Peace March held in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The purpose of the march was to express grievances against the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza and to express hopes for peace to the Irish government. Spanish newspapers (unlike Irish or British media in which ETA is often referred to as a separatist group and not a terrorist group) such as elmundo.es, expressed disgust that de Juana, having been convicted of causing many deaths, would be so duplicitous as to publicly march for peace when in an infamous speech he stated that:

References

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