The National Court has granted parole to ETA prisoner Asier Carrera Arenzana, sentenced to more than 100 years in prison for the murder, on 22 February 2000 in Vitoria, of the Basque socialist leader Fernando Buesa and his bodyguard, the ertzaina Jorge Díez, as reported by the association supporting prisoners of the terrorist organization Etxerat and confirmed by EL PAÍS in legal sources and by the Basque government. That crime shocked Basque society and led to the breaking of the agreements that the PNV-EA coalition had signed a year earlier with Euskal Herritarrok, Batasuna’s heir.
Carrera, who has served 25 of the 30 years of actual prison he had to serve, had been on open or semi-liberty since October 2023 and, for a year, was subjected to electronic monitoring to avoid having to go to prison. Now, after his release on parole this Monday, the ETA member will be subject to various restrictions and “rules of conduct” in his daily life until his sentence is complete. With it, there are now 53 prisoners of the terrorist organization who have access to this prison benefit since 2019, according to the latest Observatory on Prison Policy of the Association of Victims of Terrorism (AVT).
The prison reports from recent years on Carrera, in prison since November 2000, positively assessed that he had presented written declarations of repentance, in particular that of 13 December 2021 in which he “deeply regretted the suffering caused to the families” of his victims, whom he cited by name, assessed as “an important step forward in his evolution”. Furthermore, they underlined that he maintained an “effective attitude and behavior” to meet the civil liability imposed on him by the sentence. They also focused on the fact that since he started enjoying regular outings, he has volunteered in an NGO serving migrants and on his evolution. His prognosis for recurrence was already “low.”
The Department of Justice of the Basque government, in fact, granted Carrera third degree or semi-freedom in October 2022, a provision then challenged by the Prosecutor’s Office and ended up being revoked by the National Court in February of the following year. Subsequently, Judge María Reyes Jimeno supported her decision that this prison benefit had been granted “prematurely”, since although the prisoner’s evolution had been positive and he had shown his remorse, all this was not sufficient to guarantee him at that time a prison regime that would allow him to leave prison on a daily basis. A year later, in October 2023, he finally accepted the open regime, which was expanded the following year when he began serving his sentence in a more permissive regime under electronic supervision.
In the latest conditional releases granted by the National Court to ETA prisoners, among other measures, they are required to “obtain prior authorization” from the judge “to make any movement outside the place of habitual residence or change of residence or address”. Also the express ban on “making any type of interview, statement or appearance in the media that glorifies terrorism or humiliates victims”. Furthermore, they are reminded of their obligation to continue to pay the civil liabilities that were imposed on them in the sentence, even if in symbolic monthly amounts; and a ban on approaching the victims’ homes and participating “in any type of tribute or public event organized in their honor or in honor of other members of the terrorist organization ETA”.
According to the sentence that condemned Carrera and Luis Mariñelarena in June 2002, both members of the Ituren Command They placed a van loaded with more than 20 kilos of explosives and shrapnel on the Vitoria university campus. Buesa, PSE spokesperson in the Basque Parliament, was 53 years old, married with three children. Your escort He was 26 years old and single. Both had just left the parliamentarian’s house in the company of their son, to whom they had just said goodbye. The ETA terrorists had them in sight when, according to the sentence, Carrera activated the remote control which activated the explosive and caused the immediate death of the two victims and the wounding of two other people.
