Accused of belonging to or collaborating with ETA, the prosecutor applied for 12, 10 and 8 years for 34 persons charged in the so-called Herriko Tabernas case (summary 35/2002). Most of them have been political positions of HB, Batasuna and EH. As for the 110 Herriko Tabernas accused, they are accused of financing ETA with its activity and their confiscation is called for as a sanction.

The defendants have had to make long round-trip trips last week and have had long sessions in the National Hearing room of San Fernando de Henares in Madrid. It is also the payment of the prison sentences you have suffered or the hard bail you have had to pay to prevent it.

In the two sessions last week and in the three of this week the decisive days will live. On 6 and 7 March, the Prosecutor ' s Office made its final requests, considerably reducing the requests for penalties: Of the applications for 12, 10 and 8 years, 4 years and 6 months, 2 years and 6 months and 2 years and 2 months have passed. Freedom for a group of nine. Two other people were released on 6 March at the same oral session, after the prosecutor withdrew his charges.

In the petitions it is clear that the prosecutor wants to see a large group in prison, as he asks for a sentence of two years and several months in prison. Imprisonment for less than two years shall not be required unless the pensioner has another penalty in force.
From the point of view of the accusations, the trial has been very weak, as those who have been tried before under the umbrella “everything is ETA”. The Egunkaria and Udalbiltza cases were very clear and the defendants were acquitted. The same did not happen, for example, 18/98 or Jarrai-Haika-Segirenea, and dozens of people were sent to prison for belonging, for example, to the Egin Board of Directors. The trials were carried out at the time when ETA acted and it seems that “everything is ETA” was devoured more easily, although there was no evidence of the existence of a fact that determines the criminal offense.

It has now also been clearly seen in the oral hearing what was seen in the summary: the defendants are accused of belonging to ETA, but the prosecutors and accusations are not able to show what concrete action is being taken – or that collaboration –. These alleged evidence is based on two arguments: one, the documents seized from ETA or other political institutions over the past 30 years; and two, the police or civil guards’ comments on them, always in a weak and totally partial way, as has been shown on numerous occasions by the lawyers’ questions: “The reports commissioned by Baltasar Garzón and our work was hypothesized,” said the police chief of information in response to the lawyer’s questions. Jurists of the height of Joserramon Bengoetxea, Nazario Oleaga, Iñaki Lasagabaster or Txema Montero, among others, have repeatedly denounced this type of conduct.

This journalist was present at the oral sessions on 6 and 7 March, when both prosecutors made their last requests and statements, and heard nothing more than a fact to support the accusation of belonging to ETA: he committed or collaborated in this attack, collaborated in it, kept this, wrote the other to ETA ... absolutely nothing. However, he is a member of the HB National Bureau, a member of the KAS, participated in the HASI Congress... Thus, the defendants are allegedly from ETA, because in some papers it is said that HB is the mass front and the institutional front of ETA. Or more seriously, the prosecution’s action went further and tried to criminalize the HB itself. Not because HB is ETA, but because it is HB, that's enough to penalize, because HB is a criminal group in itself: If there is no concrete fact to say it's ETA, let's say it's HB and it's ready, but, of course, for that it's essential to say that HB is a criminal organization.

The prosecutor has also placed special emphasis on the fact that the Herriko Tabernas are HB, which was the local HB group that sent in the Herriko Tabernas. He insisted on that. The goal? That such bars or societies were instruments of the criminal organization and were at their service. And if the jury accepts this thesis, the conclusion is serious: the state will confiscate all the remains of the bars of 110 or many of them.