Beatrice Molle-Haran and Txetx Jean-Noël Etcheverry spent 2 and 3 April at the Paris Correctional Court. On 16 December 2016, they will be tried on the occasion of ETA's civil disarmament in Luhuso for "use, carry and retain weapons, ammunition and explosives in relations with the terrorist organisation ETA". Five people were arrested, but the judge decided to exclude Etxe Stephane Etchegaray from the trial and since 2016 Mixel Bergouignan and Mixel Berhokoirigoin have died in action. At a press conference held this Thursday morning in Baiona, the campaign was announced to ask the "clear and simple exculpation" of the defendants.
They wanted to remind the defendants that, under the excuse of ETA's disarmament, "[both France and Spain] had put an end to inertia in the last five years." In fact, three days after the 2011 Aiete Declaration, ETA launched its decision to abandon the armed struggle definitively, but against it, the states that followed the path of repression, frustrating and hindering the steps of the solution. Subsequently, on 8 April 2017, 20,000 people met in Baiona, the day the armed organization made the weapons available to Basque civil society, and on 3 May 2018 ETA officially announced its dissolution. "We assume everything they accuse us, but we ask for their exculpation. We would do it again if necessary. We did what the two states had to do," said Txetx Etcheverry.
In the conviction that there is still much to be done on the road to the solution of conflict and peace, a dynamic is initiated to ask about the innocence of the accused: "We ask for a clear and simple exculpation. Innocence would be understood as a sign of joint reparation for the consequences of an armed confrontation that the Basque people have known for too long and as a unitary will to open a new page of their history".
Bake Bidea has launched a compilation of names that give rise to this request and have made known the first hundred signatories at the Baiona press conference. From the international level to Euskal Herria, from culture to unionism, the list is as broad as plural. Relationship of the first hundred supporters in this link.