The Spanish National Criminal Court started trying the members of Haika and Segi, the Basque nationalist left youth organisations, on Monday the 14th of February.

The Prosecutor of the Spanish National Criminal Court issued the requests for penalties on October 4: prison terms totalling 654 years. That day news agencies quoting court sources said the 42 young people could stand trial at the end of January or early in February. The lawyers thought it unlikely that all the legal proceedings could be completed in such a short time, especially bearing in mind that they had been planning to file a number of appeals.

But there was another factor. The young people arrested and remanded in custody in the operation against Haika will have spent four years behind bars by March. If no trial date had been set by then, they would have to be released. That is why the whole process has been speeded up, as the indictees themselves have denounced again and again. So on Monday they were standing trial accused of being members of ETA or of aiding and abetting ETA, because they were members of the Jarrai, Haika or Segi organisations.
“Public opinion must be made aware of the nonsense, madness and hysteria going on in the Spanish National Criminal Court”. On behalf of the defence council acting in the 18/01 case the lawyer, Kepa Landa, was speaking about the trial, wich started on Monday at the National Criminal Court, of the 42 young people connected with the Haika and Segi Basque nationalist left youth organisations. The lawyers are astonished, worried, angry and cannot believe what is going on. “In all my 25 years in the profession I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Kepa Landa. And the lawyers representing Basque prisoners have seen a lot.

The lawyers of the young people explained that the Court was committing one infringement after another resulting in a “Kafkaesque” situation. Convinced of the need to stand up to all this, they have appealed to a number of institutions and the public at large for support. They have met with the Law Societies of Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa to denounce the infringements and to request that the trial be halted. They have also had a meeting with Joseba Azkarraga, the Justice Minister of the BAC-Basque Autonomous Community, and have sent a statement to the Human Rights Committee of the BAC Parliament. The lawyers have filed a complaint with the National Criminal Court itself. Apart from this they have appealed to the Association of European Lawyers. Members of this association have been told about the situation by the Basque lawyers and have undertaken to monitor the trial on the ground.
Landa said that by not complying with what in fact was a “simple procedure”, the Court had been keeping 21 of the indictees in custody in remand centres “as if they were hostages” serving “convictions imposed in advance”. He likened the situation of the young people to that of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

The lawyer explained that now that six of the indictees are about to complete four years in custody, the Court has realised that these young people will have to be released if no trial is held by March. That is when, according to Landa, the Court’s “hurry and hysteria” began. They have set in motion the “machinery” to hold the trial that runs to thousands of pages and they want it to take place in a matter of days, as the lawyer Arantza Zulueta explained. “The sole aim is to get the trial out of the way before the four years are up,” she added. She felt they had decided to do this “come what may, even if it means infringing every single right”. This leads the lawyers to believe that the young people are going to be convicted. The lawyer is sure that when the matter is referred to the Supreme Court, the latter will annul a number of measures taken by the Spanish National Criminal Court.
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