A daily newspaper is closed down by armed police after a series of dawn raids, which see them carting away computers and documents.
A former editor of the newspaper, after five days in police detention, tries to hang himself in a hospital room. The present editor is released, but claims that the police tortured him by placing plastic bags over his head.
Local politicians angrily denounce police conduct; the government, with equal vehemence, denies the allegations. It in turn accuses the newspaper and its editors of following the orders of a terrorist group that has killed and crippled other journalists.
It sounds like a story from a conflict-ridden developing-world country. But no, this is Spain; the newspaper is the Basque-language Egunkaria, the ‘journalist killers” are the separatist group ETA and the government is headed by conservative People’s Party leader Jose Maria Aznar.
At the end of February, former editor Peio Zubiria, current editor Martxelo Otamendi and eight other managers and journalists were detained and Egunkaria was closed down under anti-terrorism legislation.
The only newspaper printed exclusively in the Basque language of Euskara, it had a daily sale of some 15 000 copies and £5-million funding from the regional government, run by moderate, anti-ETA Basque nationalists.
After five days of questioning, Zubiria and five others were remanded in jail or, in the former’s case, in hospital. Otamendi and the remaining three were allowed out after posting bail. All were formally accused of being members of, or collaborators with, ETA. Meanwhile, the newspaper’s offices were taped off and workers barred from entering.
The police operation was carried out on the orders of Judge Juan del Olmo, an investigating magistrate at Madrid’s National Tribunal.
Leaked court documents published in Spanish newspapers show that he came to his decision after studying ETA documents discovered a decade ago. ETA, he says, was involved in the financing of the newspaper when it was founded 13 years ago and set the original editorial line.
The journalists arrested had been named in documents found in the possession of ETA leaders arrested between 1990 and 1993. These, according to the judge, indicate that Egunkaria was being used by ETA ‘both from the financial point of view — and in order to strengthen terrorist objectives [by creating a media structure in Euskara controlled by the ETA terrorist organisation].”
From the beginning, the judge said, ETA had invested the money it raised through extortion and kidnapping in the newspaper as part of a strategy to impose its control on Basque society. Xabier Alegria, a hardline separatist leader who was among those detained, was appointed as the link man.
In a telephone interview, Otamendi denied that the newspaper had operated as ETA’s mouthpiece. Just a few days before the newspaper was closed, he said, he had himself written an editorial criticising ETA for the recent killing of a Socialist party member in Andoain, where Egunkaria has its headquarters. ‘It is an insult to call us a pro-ETA newspaper. I have never received instructions from ETA. And the day I did I would not pay the slightest bit of attention,” he said.
Otamendi went on to argue that the ETA documents that mentioned his name were simply internal papers in which members of the armed group discussed the political positions of a number of journalists.
‘My name must have been mentioned in many such documents drawn up by all sorts of political parties and other organisations,” he said. ‘That does not make me a member of ETA.”
A group of Basque writers, including the most famous living writer in Euskara, Bernardo Atxaga, have given Otamendi their backing. ‘Nobody in their right mind would affirm that the editorial line of Egunkaria was favourable to ETA,” they said. ‘With respect to the political situation in the Basque country, we had read opinions of all kinds, without exclusion.”
Egunkaria has, however, been accused of being less than wholehearted in its condemnation of ETA for the killing of José Luis Lopez de la Calle, a columnist for El Mundo who was gunned down on his doorstep.
Another reader and former contributor, who asked to remain anonymous, said the newspaper’s line had toughened in recent times to reflect the hardline views of the now suspended ETA-supporting party, Batasuna. Otamendi himself had recently interviewed ETA’s leadership. However: ‘Half the people they have arrested have publicly expressed their opposition to ETA. Zubiria was known for his fights with Batasuna.”
The closure of Egunkaria has huge symbolic weight. It had become the main cultural meeting place for ‘Euskaldun” (those who consider Euskara their first language). ‘Egunkaria has helped us live a more normal life as Basque speakers,” the Basque writers explained.
The closure was condemned by the Basque Nationalist Party, the moderate nationalist group that leads the semi-autonomous regional Basque government. ‘This is a measure that would be apt in totalitarian states,” said party spokesperson Joseba Egibar.
When Otamendi’s torture claims were taken up by Inaki Anasagasti, the Basque Nationalist Party’s leader in the Madrid Parliament, Interior Minister Angel Acebes threatened legal action. He said Otamendi and others had ‘applied the ETA rulebook†by ‘falsely denouncing†torture, a common practice among ETA detainees.
The future of Egunkaria now lies in Judge del Olmo’s hands. But past precedent does not bode well for the paper. Five years ago the courts closed down Egin, a radical, separatist newspaper, alleging that it, too, was part of ETA. That case has yet to come to trial. Otamendi and his staff, meanwhile, have vowed to bring out a new paper — and the Basque government has promised to fund it. —