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INPRIMATU
The Supreme Court resumes the case for "Bateragune"
  • On 14 December, the sixteen judges of the second chamber of the Supreme Court agreed to the reopening of the "Bateragune" case. The decision was taken unanimously and would be carried out at the Spanish National Hearing. Therefore, Arnaldo Otegi, Rafa Díez, Sonia Jacinto, Miren Zabaleta and Arkaitz Rodríguez will be tried again, despite the fact that, among them, they served the total sentence of 31 years in prison. This is the first time that a judgment has been reopened and annulled by the European Court of Human Rights. Judge Manuel Marchena opened a gap to reach this situation.  
ARGIA @argia 2020ko abenduaren 14a

As the Naiz media has gathered, the judges have decided to repeat the trial taking into account Article 4.2 of Protocol 7 to the European Convention on Human Rights, which excludes the two-time ban on trial in this case. The judges point out that they have also relied on the jurisprudence of the court itself to make the decision.

Before we know the decision, we bring to ARGIA the antecedents of Ramón Sola and Maddi Ane Txoperena in the Naiz medium. The following is a summary of the collection of:

These five colleagues were arrested in 2009 and tried in 2011 in the "Bateragune Case" and sentenced to a total of 31 years in prison. The European Court of Human Rights, for its part, ruled in 2018 that they were tried and sentenced without impartiality. And, according to the European Court, at the end of July came the judgment of the Supreme Court, which was supposed to be the last one: the penalties that were received and complied with the five defendants were annulled by the Court itself.

It should be noted that at the time of the closure of the case no one asked for a reopening, nor did the prosecutor Illana Navia-Osorio ask for a reopening. And it is precisely this prosecutor who is calling for the case to be reopened, taking advantage of the fact that Judge Manuel Marchena, known for condemning the Catalan independentists, in September proposed a very broad reassessment of the parties.

The Strasbourg judgment says that the defendants should call for the case to be reopened

Maddi Ane Txoperena, a journalist from Berria, has thus translated what the Strasbourg sentence says: "The most appropriate means of redress would, in principle, be to rebuild the case or reopen the case, at the request of the person concerned." And the defendants haven't asked. This is what the defendants’ defense will argue.