The owners of the company José Ignacio Barinaga, the manager and niece of the former, Arrate Bilbao, and the engineer Juan Etxeberria, spent 48 hours at the police station of the Ertzaintza in Eibar. Finally, the detainees decided not to declare, according to their lawyers, having received the report of the Ertzaintza of hundreds of pages on the case an hour before and claiming that they did not have time to examine it. The first two have a team of lawyers and an engineer with another lawyer. The lawyers of the disappeared Alberto Sololuze and Joaquín Beltrán also worked along the same lines.

The incident has been caused by confusion over the arrests, as the Department of Security initially reported that the arrest warrant had been issued by the judge. Subsequently, the Basque Government reported that there had been a misunderstanding and that, instead of ordering, the judge authorized the detainees to take a statement.

Two causes for the time being

In fact, the Zaldibar disaster is now on two issues: The Durango First Instruction Room investigates possible crimes against people – which also carries the case with arrests – and the Second Chamber deals with crimes against the environment. However, the Provincial Court of Bizkaia is studying whether it groups the two cases together and, according to legal sources, this seems to be the most logical thing.

The journalist of Gara Iñaki Iriondo reported on Friday that these arrests are related to the tempus of the case. In this connection, he pointed out that, once the causes were combined, it would be more difficult to keep detainees on parole with this type of precautionary measure, so that the arrests have been made before the cases are joined. In the Spanish State, the crime of reckless murder can be punishable by a prison sentence of six months to four years.