France gives the green light to the extradition of historic ETA leader Josu Ternera

BarcelonaThe Paris Court of Appeal on Thursday acquitted the historic ETA leader José Antonio Urrutikoetxea, known as Josu Ternera, in the last case he had open in France. The president of the court read the acquitting verdict in front of Ternera, who attended the hearing accompanied by his lawyers, as reported by Efe Agency. The trial, held in April, accused him of belonging to a terrorist organization for the period between December 2002 and May 2005, when he fled Spain — at the time he was a deputy in the Basque Parliament — to escape the investigation into his possible involvement in the 1987 bombing of the Civil Guard barracks in Zaragoza, which killed eleven people.

The main evidence against him were DNA traces and fingerprints found in two ETA safe houses, in Lourdes and Villeneuve-sur-Lot, where the then military head of the group, Peio Eskisabel, and his lieutenant, José Manuel Ugartemendia, had lived, who were arrested in late April 2005. The French Public Prosecutor's Office had requested five years in prison, suspended, and definitive expulsion from the country.

With this acquittal, Ternera exhausts the last judicial proceeding pending in France, a condition that the French justice had set as a prerequisite to execute his extradition to Spain. Last June, the Paris Court of Appeal had already given the green light to a European arrest warrant issued by the National Court, but had postponed its execution precisely until this case was resolved. Now, therefore, the way is open for Ternera to be finally handed over to Spain, where a trial awaits him for his alleged responsibility as an ETA leader, among other cases such as the Zaragoza bombing and the financing of the group through the herriko taberna.