How and why did Juan Calvo be killed at the Ertzaintza police station?
- On 20 August 1993, Juan Calvo Azabal was killed at the Arkaute police station in Vitoria. The body had signs of violence and gas by mouth. In 1995, eight Ertzainas were convicted of an offence of recklessness, no one lost their jobs or stepped into prison, no one was convicted of ill-treatment or torture. At the age of 30, ARGIA has obtained new information on the case: analysis of the body by doctors and forensics; interview with the nurse who attended Calvo before the appearance of the body; and statement by the only direct witness that what happened was “unclear”, among others. How and why did Juan Calvo be murdered at the police station of the Ertzaintza in Vitoria? At the end of the 1995 trial, these questions remained unanswered. The information that ARGIA publishes generates new questions that reinforce the only certainty of then: the official truth does not explain what happened.
Let's start summarizing what was known at the time.
First, the Basque Government’s Department of Security summarized Calvo’s death in a press release on the afternoon of 20 August. “This morning, Friday, the person who was arrested yesterday afternoon in Nanclares (Álava) after stealing a taxi in Bilbao and performing a spectacular persecution has died. The detainee, who was three times admitted to several psychiatric wards, lost consciousness after suffering a violent nervous crisis and attacking the Ertzaines who wanted to help.” The note explained further below. Calvo was arrested around 18:30, after placing “resistance in an apparently nervous crisis situation.” He was taken to the hospital in Santiago de Vitoria-Gasteiz to attend his “moratón”, which led to his police station. There Calvo’s behavior was “normal” until around 4:00 he began to hit “against the walls of the cell.” The Ertzainas entered the cell, Calvo attacked them and when the police managed to dominate they lost knowledge. The ambulance took Calvo to the hospital, where they confirmed the death.
However, the newspaper Egin published additional information from “safe sources at Santiago Hospital”: The body of Calvo had large bruises all over the body, on the wrists, as well as acute pulmonary edema, and the doctors who took him in ambulance had to put masks because of the gas the deceased expelled. He later published, contrary to what the Department of Security said, that Calvo had spent hours tied and immobilized before his death, as his deep fingerprints on his wrist indicated.
The Amnesty Commissions, the Elkarri Movement or the People's Union attributed death to torture. Eusko Alkartasuna or Euzkadi Ezkerra criticized the Department of Security’s lack of explanation.
First version of the Department of Security: "The detainee lost consciousness after suffering a violent nervous crisis and attacking the Ertzaines who wanted to help."
New version of Security
On 23 August, three days after the opening of the first note and forced by such information and reactions, the Deputy Councilor, José Manuel Martiarena, issued a new version of what happened.
In his account, Martiarena further highlighted Calvo’s alleged violence and “weird” behavior, recognizing that the Ertzaines used porras and gas against the detainee. The second version came into contradiction on several points.
As for the alleged confrontation, according to Martiarena and the Department of Security, this was the case. Calvo asked to go to the bathroom at 3:45, punched an ertzaina and among the three Ertzainas tried to dominate the detainee. But “it was impossible to control that man, and before the appearance of the facts, an agent used the defense spray. The gas did not affect him and the detainee increased aggressiveness.” The Ertzainas closed Calvo in dungeons, but reduced two doors to the street. “Already on the street, eight agents immobilized Calvo and put the donkeys on him”; then the police realized that the pulse was “very weak”; the ambulance then took him to the hospital.
“He has been a victim of his illness,” concluded Vice Security Advisor José Manuel Martiarena.
“He’s been a victim of his illness,” Martiarena concluded. The mental illness of a citizen under the supervision of the Ertzaintza seemed to relieve the responsibility of the organization and the agents rather than aggravate it.
The chief political officer of the Ertzaintza of the time, Juan Mari Atutxa, made no statement to the deceased citizen in his custody until 16 September. I would like to ask the President-in-Office of the Council, Mr President of the Commission, whether the European Parliament's Committee on Institutional Affairs or the Internal Affairs of the Parliament of Vitoria has been consulted. He reaffirmed and completed the second version of his department and fully supported the action of the Ertzainas: “There was no willingness or disproportion to commit crimes.”
Judgment and judgment
The High Court of Investigation of the Court of Vitoria, in February 1994, notified eight Ertzainas of the commission of an offence of recklessness that caused death. It was then that the result of the autopsy was officially known: the body suffered dozens of blows and sequelae of violence, but Calvo died from inhalation of the Ertzaintza sprays gas, and more specifically from the pulmonary edema caused by the gas.
The trial was held on 9 February 1995 and the judgment was notified on 23 by the Provincial Court of Álava: “The guilt of the events that led to the murder of the unhappy victim, Juan Calvo, is clearly from the police officers, aware of the negative consequences of the gas, which prevented the detainee from leaving the cell.”
ARGIA has tried to obtain the full sentence, but has not managed it for the time being: the family lawyer, Txema Montero, and the TAT lawyer, Begoña de la Cal, have not kept it, we have a request in the court (because it is a public judgment), but they have not sent us when writing this information. In any case, both in the press at the time and in the network itself, the jury sentenced six Ertzainas to one year in prison for a crime of recklessness: Juan Antonio Arenaza, Aitor Zubiaguirre Fernández de Gamarra, Francisco Javier Muñoz Miranda, Roberto Martínez de Arenaza García de Albeniz and Rogelio González González. José Ignacio Couceiro Cuadra, Ertzaina Head of the Ertzaintza, was sentenced to six years in prison for aggravating professional negligence in addition to the previous crime. The only ertzaina that recognized having pumped gas (pressing twice the spray, for a second), Cristina Martín Canabal, out of recklessness with minor arrest or 10-day arrest, did not participate in the attempt to keep the Calvo gas closed in dungeons, according to the court.
TAT and lawyer Txema Montero positively valued the prison sentence imposed on the Ertzainas, but negatively punished as a lack the numerous traces of wounds and blows of Calvo's body, and not as a crime.
Impunity
The sanction imposed on the Ertzainas was “absolutely insane” for Deputy Security Advisor Martiarena, as he said the same day. At the hour, Atutxa reduced the tone: the department “respected” court decisions, but the sentence was “too rigid”. Concerning the Ertzaintza trade unions: CCOO asked the Department of Security to make a request for pardon “as soon as possible”; “The sanctions imposed on us seem truly disproportionate,” said ELA, which stated that the “unfair” penalty and supported the pensioners. The convicted Ertzainas appealed to the sentence.
The police continued in their jobs, no one stepped into jail or resigned. Calvo's family received no explanation, responsibility or regret.
In January 1996, the Supreme Court reduced the sentence to the head of the Ertzaintza from six to one year, confirming the remaining sanctions. In short, all the police continued in their jobs, no one stepped into jail or resigned. The family of Juan Calvo has told ARGIA that they had not received any kind of explanation, responsibility or regret from the Ertzaintza.
New information about ARGIA
One of the doctors who tried to revitalize Calvo in the emergency rooms of the hospital in Santiago was impacted with the resident. When he got home, he wrote everything he remembered. ARGIA publishes in this report this medical report that has been kept for 30 years and the official autopsy of the body in audio format.
ARGIA talked to Patxi Bezares, then nursing assistant. Bezares healed some minor wounds to Calvo when the Ertzaines first took her to the emergency room, at dusk, recently detained. Calvo died on returning to work the next morning. He saw the body and says he didn't even know the "massacred" that was so big. Bezares says, among other things, that at least one of the doctors who had direct contact with Calvo, who when he came home wrote the report and kept it, suffered during the coming months and threats from the Ertzaintza.
A series of reports in which it is annulled, delves into some of the information given at the time and new data are provided
In addition, there is a direct witness to this crime (in addition to the Ertzainas charged). M.U.M. I was in the same day's cell in front of Calvo. the . First, he ratified the version of the Ertzainas in the pre-police statement, but at the trial his lawyer assured him that the witness had told him that Calvo had been tied “like a flock” and “beaten mercilessly”. ARGIA found the witness and quoted him. He does not report what he saw or heard in dungeons, but points out that things were “unclear.”
Finally, ARGIA has obtained the statements made at the police station itself by the Ertzainas who had direct contact with Calvo a few hours after his death. The result of the analysis of the statements is clear: the ertzainas reports are not compatible with the situation of the body of Calvo. The Department of Security fully supported the Ertzainas and their version.
ETA scenario
For a while the Ertzaintza thought that the citizen who stole a taxi in Bilbao could be a member of ETA. During these months, three people have expressed the same idea to ARGIA. “What came to us is the citizen who stole a taxi when he was a member of ETA and brought him a hair,” says Patxi Bezares, who attended Calvo in the hospital. Calvo’s family attorney Txema Montero told ARGIA that, of course, until Calvo was arrested, that was the Ertzaintza’s opinion, “no doubt.” In the Group against Torture, according to Julen Arzuaga, then a member of the group and current EH Bildu parliamentarian, the Ertzaintza qualified Calvo as a member of ETA and was able to condition the treatment given to the detainee. In the same trial, both the TAT attorney and Montero asked the Ertzainas who conducted the arrest for this hypothesis: Given the magnitude of the operation initiated by the Department of Security (a helicopter, among others), the police stated that they thought it and that one kept that impression until the following day (Calvo already dead).
For 1993, dozens of complaints against the Ertzaintza for torture or ill-treatment were filed. Two of them made their way in the courts: Andoni Murelaga in 1990 and Raúl Ibáñez in 1991. It would be 24 years before the Government approved 311 cases of torture of the Ertzaintza.
It can be considered quite certain that the Ertzaintza had the suspicion of ETA, considering the number and diversity of testimonies or the use of a helicopter to continue Calvo 30 years ago. On the contrary, the Department of Security never made any statement about this; it seems that the anti-terrorist groups of the Ertzaintza could not participate in the detention, or later in the police station; or, as the coroner who analyzed the autopsy at the request of ARGIA points out, the obvious signs of violence contained in the body of Calvo do not correspond to the usual ones tortured for “political reasons.”
Did the Ertzaintza work with the ETA hypothesis for Calvo? Did this condition detention, treatment of the detainee or reaction of the detainee? In short, did this hypothesis have anything to do with the tragic death of Calvo? These are also questions that can only be answered by ertzainas and their guardians.
Eleven questions, a certainty
Several journalists followed the trial. “The highlight in this case is the remarkable shadows over the facts,” wrote Egin journalist Iñaki Iriondo. “The investigation of Juan Calvo’s death does not seem to have helped clarify what happened to members of the same police body charged,” by A de El Correo. Molasses.
How and why did Juan Calvo be killed at the Ertzaintza police station? After 30 years, the question remains the same. Only the Ertzaines who were there can clarify this and perhaps those who were then responsible for the Ertzaintza. However, some information that occurred at the time was canceled, published on occasions and new data will be published in this series of reports. It leaves many questions in the air and the only certainty is that the official truth is not enough to understand the death of Juan Calvo and its surroundings.
In the following articles we will analyze each one in greater depth the new documents and testimonies mentioned.
- 30 years hidden in the light: evidence of torture.
- INTERVIEW | Patxi Bezares, worker of the Hospital Santiago who attended Juan Calvo: "That body was massacred."
- VIDEO | Juan Calvo: several episodes of the autopsy.
- Witness of Calvo's death: “Things were not clarified”
- Ertzainas and Department of Security: lies, gaps and contradictions
