Joshua Urrutikoetxea

Jose Antonio Urrutikoetxea Bengoetxea (born December 24, 1950 in Ugao-Miraballes , Bizkaia / Spain , better known as Josu Ternera ) is a suspected member of the top management of the disbanded Basque terrorist organization ETA and was from 1998 to 2002 for Euskal Herritarrok , a member of the ETA - The Batasuna- dominated alliance, member of the parliament of the Basque Autonomous Community .

Life

Josu Ternera is one of the oldest members of the ETA and was active as a representative of the political wing of the organization during the Franco dictatorship . In 1971 he fled to France, where he went underground and joined the so-called military wing. In the following years he was involved in several raids in the Spanish Basque Country and eventually took over the management of the military wing. Since 1980 he was at the top of the organization and from 1984 was deputy to the leader Domingo Iturbe Abasolo . During the eighties he took part in the - ultimately failed - negotiations between ETA and the Spanish government under Felipe González . After Iturbe's death in 1987, Ternera took over the management of the organization himself.

Two years later he was arrested in Bayonne and in 1990 sentenced to ten years in prison in France for membership in a criminal organization, forgery of documents and illicit gun possession. After serving his sentence, he was expelled from France in 1996 and extradited to Spain, where the public prosecutor's office demanded a prison sentence of 12 years because of Ternera's leadership role in ETA. In 1998, however, the court ruled that, following the French judgment, Ternera could not be convicted again for his ETA membership and that the remaining crimes for which he could have been convicted were already statute barred.

Ternera was then released and elected to the Basque regional parliament in 1998 on the list of Euskal Herritarrok (an electoral alliance dominated by the ETA-affiliated Batasuna party ). There he was a member of the Human Rights Committee, which deals in particular with the situation of the imprisoned ETA members. In 2002, however, Ternera went underground again after a court decided to investigate his links to an attack on a barracks in Saragossa that killed 12 people in 1987.

After his escape, Josu Ternera again took on an important role in the ETA leadership. In view of the increasing delegitimisation of terrorism in Spanish and Basque societies, he campaigned for an end to armed actions and for a political dialogue, which the ETA proposed to the Spanish government under José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero on January 16, 2005. On March 22, 2006, the ETA finally announced a long-awaited permanent ceasefire, after which negotiations between the organization and the government actually took place. Josu Ternera acted as negotiator for ETA in several discussions.

However, the negotiations within ETA and the ETA environment were not without controversy. While the leadership of the now banned Batasuna party around Arnaldo Otegi and numerous imprisoned ETA members supported the dialogue, others, in particular Mikel Garikoitz Aspiazu Rubina alias Txeroki , called for a return to violence. At the end of 2006 there was then a change of power within the top management of ETA, in which Josu Ternera was replaced. In the last conversation between the ETA and the government, therefore, no longer he, but Francisco Javier López Peña alias Thierry took part. On December 30, 2006, an ETA commando, presumably on the instructions of Txeroki , carried out an explosives attack at Madrid-Barajas airport , in which two Ecuadorians died. The Spanish government then broke off the dialogue.

During 2007 and 2008, Ternera completely disappeared from the public eye and no longer appeared as an ETA leader. Rumors existed that he had fled to South America and had stomach cancer . It was only after several ETA leaders were arrested during 2008 (including Txeroki and Thierry ) that Ternera returned to the top of the organization in early 2009, according to press reports. This was interpreted as a resurgence of the negotiating wing within the ETA.

Ternera was arrested in France in May 2019 on suspicion that he was involved in the 1987 ETA bomb attack on Civil Guard barracks in Zaragoza .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ https://www.dw.com/de/baskische-eta-gibt-komplette-aufl%C3%B6sung-bekannt/a-43625819
2. ↑ El País: Josu Ternera vuelve a la dirección de ETA (in Spanish), April 19, 2009.
3. ^ Basque underground organization: Former Eta leader Ternera arrested in France . In: Spiegel Online . May 16, 2019 ( spiegel.de [accessed on May 16, 2019]).