Consuelo OrdóñezSister Gregorio Ordóñez, PP councilor murdered by ETA in 1995, denounced this Thursday in Pamplona the “granting fraudulent third degrees to unrepentant prisoners”. He stated that it is the Government’s “last trap” to “comply with the demands” by EH Bilduwhich adds to the “covert transposition approved in Congress that will allow the release of dozens of ETA prisoners.”
“The third degrees are being granted without meeting the fundamental requirement required by law to progress to the third degree: repentance. It is public and notorious that ETA prisoners have always been prisoners with a double lock: that of the justice that has condemned them and that of the nationalist left. The latter is the strongest,” said the president of Covite.
The magistrate Javier Gómez Bermúdez He disagreed with Ordóñez’s opinion. “To grant the third degree, a prognosis of social reintegration is required, which means that they do not reintegrate into certain radical circles,” said Gómez Bermúdez, who explained the “difficulty of knowing whether the regret expressed by a prisoner is sincere or interested.” . “Repentance cannot be required, but it must be taken into account to grant the third degree,” he added.
Consuelo Ordóñez clarified that Covite recognizes the “right to a second chance for those who publicly challenge their criminal past, that is, for those who honestly and without opportunism express their sincere regret”. “But what we do not accept is a false reintegration of those who remain proud of their criminal past and remain linked to a political environment that treats them as heroes and calls them political prisoners. “This is neither a necessary nor acceptable price for peace,” he said.
The president of Covite regretted that victims of terrorism continue to suffer “institutional helplessness”. “Our leaders and some judges and prosecutors seem to remain committed to denying victims their legitimate right to access to justice, including their legitimate and imprescriptible right to the truth,” he said.
