- After presenting himself on Tuesday morning at the National High Court, he was in his hometown of Asteasu in the afternoon. He will be tried in Madrid for an alleged crime of documentary falsehood, although no precautionary measures have been imposed on him. Txapartegi collaborates with ARGIA.
Txapartegi appeared with lawyer Iñigo Iruin at the National Audience of Madrid, after fifteen years in the escape of the actress. The court has annulled the arrest and extradition orders which have been in force for years and which have been issued against it. However, Txapartegi will be tried on charges of falsification of documents, but not in relation to ETA, and accused of having participated in the attack. The trial for the murder of Miguel Ángel Morán still does not have a fixed date to celebrate it.
Arrest, torture, punishment, escape
Txapartegi was arrested by the Guardia Civil in relation to macrosumario 18/98. He reported having suffered terrible torture during the period of incommunicado detention, including rape: "In March I was arrested by the Civil Guard and taken directly to Madrid. On the way they took me with my hands and feet tied and made me a bag that drowned me. They stopped me on the way, took me out of the car and, putting me in the gun, told me they would kill me. When we arrived in Madrid, ‘the best starts now’, I was told. True brutality began there. Threats of all kinds, blows, purse... and they raped me. The impotence you feel is terrible.” In this video, the 18/98 initiative contains the testimony of torture of several persons charged in that summary, carried out in the court:
In 2007, the National Court sentenced Txapartegi to 11 years in prison for a crime of ETA integration, and the defendant decided to flee from prison. In recent years he has lived in Switzerland, where he has also been subjected to police and judicial harassment. In 2016, he was arrested and imprisoned by the Swiss police, among other crimes. Finally, in 2017, the National Court concluded that the conviction handed down against him was prescribed at the time. During all these years, several citizens have denounced the situation of Txapartegi, for example, in the hometown of Asteasu Nekane free! Initiatives and Switzerland Free Nekane.
"I haven't learned to resign myself."
In January 2019, ARGIA journalist Estitxu Eizagirre conducted a long interview with Txapartegi in Swiss exile, uncovering her life, choices, feelings and thoughts. Some of the most significant passages are:
“It was a demonstration against the murder of Joxe Arrangi [the first paragraph that left me], in 1981. He was eight years old. I knew nothing about torture, but I felt the fear our parents had, that something unacceptable had happened to people. We went with the parents in a demonstration, and I have images of how the dogs came, gray, as they walked past Teodosioene (Zizurkil). And what terror had spread? ‘It’s the bad ones, the ones who step in here and frighten us,’ I thought.
"Since I was in the police station I have a backpack, some times more full and others more empty. I've learned to live with that, I've tried to manage it. But something of mine stayed in that police station.
"Being in hiding means being a mother and that carries a risk to the mother. With the child I cannot be hidden at home, that child has to go to school, the doctor... that was the key, how to manage those risks and fears to meet the needs of the child"
"For me, it was a prison university: I worked real feminism in jail."
“At the ikastola they once explained to us who Dolores Ibarruri was, and for me it was to open my eyes: at that time talking to the people as a woman... I thought, 'I want to be like that, but in Basque'. My idols were Pipi Langstrumph and Dolores Ibarruri, both strong!”.
In May 2021, Txapartegi started collaborating in the ARGIA opinion section, from Switzerland.