The Guardian (II)

Spanish police shut down Basque paper

 

Journalists held after claims that they tipped off Eta

 

Giles Tremlett, Madrid 

 

Friday 21 February 2003 02.28 GMT

 

Spanish police shut down the country’s only newspaper published exclusively in the ancient Basque language of euskara yesterday, arresting 10 journalists and managers for allegedly colluding with the armed separatist group Eta. 

 

The closure of Egunkaria sparked outrage from other media in Spain’s northern Basque country and from moderate nationalist parties controlling its semi-autonomous government, which had been financing the daily paper. 

 

They accused the courts and police of acting against the Basque language and of seriously curtailing freedom of speech in the troubled region. 

 

Hundreds of police officers wearing ski masks raided offices in Bilbao and three other cities, taking away documents and computers. 

 

The justice minister, Jose Maria Michavila, said the closure of the paper, which last year angered the conservative People’s party government in Madrid by publishing an interview with Eta leaders, was because senior staff used Egunkaria to inform Eta of police operations against it. 

 

“This new operation is directed at those who, according to the judge, are instruments of Eta and alert the terrorists each time there is an operation against a terrorist cell,” Mr Michavila said. 

 

Neither he nor the investigating magistrate Juan Del Olmo, who signed the warrant accusing the staff of being Eta members or collaborators, said how the newspaper did this. 

 

It was not clear how long editor Martxelo Otamendi and the nine other senior staff would remain in custody before appearing before the magistrate. Under anti-terror laws police have the right to question them for three days. 

 

Although the idea for Egunkaria originally came from a collective of Basque language lovers who put their own money into the project, the investigating magistrate Juan Del Olmo claimed Eta had been involved in the paper ever since it launched in 1994. 

 

The claims surprised many observers, who considered Egunkaria far less radical than the mixed-language Gara, which supports Eta’s aims and fails to condemn its violence. 

 

The Basque regional government, an enthusiastic promoter of euskara and declared opponent of Eta, has sunk more than £5m into the paper. 

 

The Basque government’s education chief, Anjeles Iztueta, accused police and judges of “criminalising ideas”. “They have failed to protect the most basic guarantees of a state of law,” she said. 

 

But the Basque government also found itself under attack for pumping public money into a newspaper that allegedly worked with Eta. 

 

“They must accept their political responsibility,” said Jaime Mayor Oreja, the region’s People’s party leader. 

 

A People’s party deputy, Car los Urquijo, said: “The Basque government has been virtually its sole backer, given that its daily sales of 15,000 and the advertising it receives are insignificant.” 

 

Yesterday was not the first time Spanish courts had acted against Mr Otamendi. After publishing an interview with Eta’s leadership last year he was placed under investigation for incitement to murder. 

 

In 1998, an investigating magistrate ordered the closure of Egin, a mixed-language separatist paper. It was also accused of aiding Eta and has never reopened, although no one at the newspaper has been tried. In a separate case, however, staff at Egin were convicted of running an extortion racket for Eta. 

 

Egunkaria’s spokesman, Mikel Arrieta, denied links with Eta, saying that the authorities have shut down “any publication that bothers the authorities”. 

 

Only one Egunkaria office, in the French Basque town of Bayonne, was open yesterday. 

 

The paper’s deputy editor, Xabier Lekuona, insisted he and his staff would print a newspaper today, probably by accepting offers of help from several other Basque papers. 

 

“We will be back on sale so that our readers can receive serious, truthful and objective information,” he said. 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/feb/21/spain.gilestremlett/print