EUSKADI Murderous attack on
Basque deputies
The murky background THE FIRST point is that there is a growing conviction as the days go by that the state apparatuses were Implicated in the outrage The round of discussions by the police minister, Corcuera, with the various parties - except the one that Muguruza belonged to a confirms the impression that they have something to hide from oublic opinion
The political cover the perpetrators enjoyed is evident There has been an operation to cut Herr Balasuna on from the society And all the parties of the system from the "right" to the "'left," all the media from the official to the Independent. are implicated In this
The terrorist atlack on alected representatives of HB, on the democratic rights of 200,000 citzens of this country, knocked the props out from under the pretenc es of a good part of the so-called constitutional "bloc." Its orientation has been to close ranks, to prevent dissident voices from being heard, and to try to pul the moral responsibility on HB, to reduce street protest or strikes
As regards the reactions of par ties and state institutions outside Euzkadi, the picture is still worse The culture of anti-terrorism* Is soaking Into the society, and an attack on a section of the Basque people in conflict with the state nstitutions can de presented as an attack on "Spanish democracy and turned against Herr Balasuna Itselt.
Herrl Batasuna called for street demonstrations and a generat strike. The result was a powerful moblization, l Is evident that these expressed a mass revulsion, in parlicular, the November 22 rally to pay homage to Josu Muguruza Is comparable to what happened five years ago when they assassinated Santi Brouard It represented one of the peaks of mobilization for our people. *
ZUtIK
TWO LEADERS of the revolutionary Basque nationalist party Herri Batasuna (HB — The People United) were gunned down by attackers in the Alcalá Hotel in Madrid on November 20. Josu Muguruza was killed, with a bullet in the head. Iñaki Esnaola was gravely wounded, with four bullets in the lungs. Both were deputies to the Spanish state parliament. The attack took place hours before the HB parliamentary group was to take the oath and begin to participate for the first time in the central legislative body. They were dining in the restaurant of their hotel, along with the manager of Egin, a bilingual radical nationalist Basque daily; and two journalists from the paper. The attackers were two men in their thirties, one wearing a hood and the other a ski mask. In its November 21 issue, the Madrid daily El
Pais noted that in the Spanish state the 9-millimetre shells fired by the assassins are used almost exclusively by the military. The operation resembled other attacks and assassinations carried out by a shadowy murder gang calling itself the Grupo Antiterrorista de Liberación (GAL, Anti-terrorist Liberation Group), which evidence in court cases has linked to the Spanish state police secret services.
The murders caused an outcry in the Basque country, leading to militant street protests and a massive, if very uneven general strike on November 22. The following are excerpts from an eye-witness account of the shooting by Teresa Toda in Zutik, the journal of the
Liga Kommunista Irautzailea (LKI, Revolutionary Communist
League, the Fourth Internationalist organization in the part of the Basque country in the Spanish state) and from the paper's editorial.
M ORE THAN a week after the attack in the Hotel Alcalá, I still find it hard to believe. How could this happen? As we told ourselves that night, this cannot be true. But it is. And as the days go by, the terrible, unalterable facts are beginning to add up. There was a press conference where Herri Batasuna explained its proposals for the Madrid parliament.
Afterwards, they went to lunch, accompanied by HB's press secretary, Xabier Olega; Ramón Uranga the manager of Egin, and the paper's Madrid correspondent. The same people met again, some hours later, for dinner. At 11:10 [dinner hour comes late in the Spanish state], the first two shots could be heard, terribly dry, hard sounds, followed by others, up to 12 of them.
Under the tables, which were used as precarious cover by the diners, lay the bodies of Josu Muguruza and Iñaki Esnaola. Josu was close to death, and Iñaki was very badly wounded.
After the police arrived, they started asking all sorts of absurd questions, and adopted an attitude that verged on the offensive for those who had just come through such a trying experience. Remarks such as "What, don't tell us this is your first terrorist attack?" addressed to some of the eye-witnesses did not help matters any.
The facts are irrevocable. The question marks remain. How the attack was carried out seems to be becoming clear, although they have not managed to arrest the perpetrators. Who the targets were and why is another matter.
It is curious to watch the shifting back and forth in the police theories over whether the shots were aimed only at Esnaola or also at Muguruza. My impression is that the assassins knew quite well what they were doing, that they had definite targets.
It seemed to be quite a professional operation, in view of its rapidity (no more than 30 seconds) and the fact that more people were not hit. If they had been hyped-up amateurs, as has also been suggested, they probably would have hit more of the people in the dining room.
Another of the big enigmas is the possible presence in the same hotel of agents of the State Security Forces. Their mission, to judge from some information that appeared in the press, was clearly not to protect the deputies and senators but to keep track of their movements and even of 21 their conversations. *
WOMEN'S LIBERATION