About a thousand people, according to the organizers, demanded on Saturday in Bayonne (southwestern France) the release of two former members of the Basque armed independence group ETA, detained for 32 years, AFP reporters said.
Behind a large banner reading “Free Ion and Jakes”, the protesters went through the center of Bayonne shouting “euskal presoak etxera” (Basque prisoners go home, in the Basque language) and threatened to “block the entire Country Basque this summer” if they were not released.
Ion Parot and Jakes Esnal, who are over 70 years old, were arrested in 1990 and sentenced to life in prison in 1997 along with other members of ETA’s “itinerant commando”, responsible, among others, for the 1987 attack on a barracks in Zaragoza (northeast of Spain), which left 11 dead.
For Jean-François Mignard, spokesman for the Ligue des droits de l’homme (League of Human Rights), Parot and Esnal “rot in prison despite the fact that with a fair application of French law they should be released.”
In Esnal’s case, the Paris appeal court is expected to issue its ruling on July 21.
As for Parot, he awaits a decision on his sixth release request next Wednesday, which is opposed by the French anti-terrorist prosecutor’s office.
Jean-Daniel Elichiry, a representative of Artisans de la paix (Artisans of Peace), the movement organizing the demonstration, threatened to “blockade the entire Basque Country this summer” if they were not released.
In 2020, another member of the “itinerant commando”, Frédéric “Xistor” Haramboure, benefited after 30 years in prison from release with an electronic bracelet.
Founded in 1959 during the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco (1939-1975), Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (Basque Country and Liberty, in Basque) committed numerous attacks, assassinations and kidnappings in Spain and France and is held responsible for more than 850 deaths.
In May 2018, eight years after declaring a ceasefire, it announced its dissolution.
