Diego Sanchez Burria
Centro Penitenciario de el Acebuche
Ctra. Cuevas de los Úbeda, km. 2,5
04071 Almería Spanish state

Diego is a young man from Barcelona who was accused of corroborating and passing information to ETA. He is accused of giving information about an army officer, a town councillor and a car registration number to the Basque separatist group. He admits being approached by ETA members in Barcelona asking him to collaborate just by checking the above information. He accepted their proposal at first but he never did carry it out. What he did admit doing was putting them in touch with another person who rented a flat to them without knowing about their involvement with ETA.

When Diego heard about the arrests of 3 ETA members in Barcelona, he left home and went to a friend’s house for two days. After consulting his lawyer during this time he decides to go voluntarily to make a statement to a Barcelona court, where he is arrested under Anti-terrorist legislation. During his 96 hour stay in police cells, before making a statement in front of the judge, he was allegedly punched, insulted, coerced, threatened and told by police officers that they were all having sex his girlfriend, who was also under arrest at that time.
Diego was sentenced with all the other people involved in the case in between the 6th-8th October 2003 and he got 9 years imprisonment for ETA membership.

Juan Ramon Rodriguez Fernandez
Centro Penitenciario Zuera
Carretera Nacional 330, Km.539
50.800 Zuera (Zaragoza) Spanish state

Juan Ramon, “Juanra”, is a man from Barcelona who was involved in various social movements such as the anti-globalisation, anti-capitalism and squatting movements. And he was also the singer of various well-known political bands such as Speereth at first and KOP later.

In September 2001, Juanra read in a newspaper that there was a warrant out for his arrest for allegedly collaborating with ETA. Believing that if he gets arrested in Spain he would be tortured at a police station, he decides to run-away to Holland to try and live undercover in a squat in Amsterdam. But because of the collaboration between the Spanish Guardia Civil police force and Europol he got arrested on the 16th January in Amsterdam and kept at the Vught maximum security prison for nearly 5 months.

Since his arrest, the Spanish state has changed the accusation against him on five occasions. In the end the magistrates decided to free him if he paid a 20,000 euros bail. The decision was taken because the Spanish state didn’t have a precise and clear accusation against him. Unfortunately for him his freedom didn’t last long and a few months later he went back to Vught prison and was later sent to a prison in Amsterdam.

Several months passed by and after various attempts from the Spanish state to get Juanra extradited to Spain the judge decided on the 7th October 2003 that Juanra could be extradited. He arrived in Madrid on the 23rd October. His trial took place on the 10th –11th May 2004 and he was sentenced to 5 year imprisonment for collaboration with ETA

Laura Riera Valenciano
Centro Penitenciario Murcia
Ctra. El Palmar-Mazarron Km 3
30120 El Palmar Spanish state

Laura is a woman from Terrassa ( a town near Barcelona ) that was sentenced to 7 years imprisonment for allegedly giving definitive information to ETA that allowed them to commit a murder on the 13th December 2000. She was accused of getting confidential information about a PP (Popular Party – right wing Spanish political party) town councillor from where she was working in the local town hall. Apparently she took the car registration number from a computer database and gave it to ETA who later killed the aforementioned right-wing PP politician. It was later proved however, that she didn`t have access to this information within her role in the town hall.

Laura`s arrest and later imprisonment goes back to summer 2001. At around 5 am of a summer’s morning in Terrassa, Guardia civil police officers cordoned off the area where she lived at that time, and started searching her flat without her being present (but her flatmate was at home). Laura was coming back from a night out when she found a large police operation going on in her flat. Because she didn`t have anything to hide from the police she decided to go into the flat and identify herself to them.

During the search no information linking her with ETA was found, and just a computer and a few cds were confiscated. No warrant was out for her arrest either but at around 11 am, six hours after they started searching her home, she was told she is under arrest. Subsequently, anti-terrorist legislation was applied to her detention and she was moved from her hometown Terrassa to Madrid where she spent 5 days in police cells without access to a lawyer, and held incommunicado and without medicines (even thought she suffers from epilepsy ). She was then allegedly physically and psychologically tortured until she signed a statement written by the police that involved her and some other people with the separatist group ETA.

On the following 28th January she was taken in front of a judge where she denies everything written in her original statement and she made another statement where she denounced the ill-treatment and torture that she suffered at the hands of the police during her five days in custody. After stating this in front of the judge she is taken to prison.
Her trial didn’t take place until the 6th October 2003 when she was sentenced to 7 years imprisonment for collaboration with ETA even thought the only evidence against her was a “confessional” statement made under torture, that she later changed in front of the judge.

Zigor Larredonda Munoz
Prision Provincial de Albacete
Ctra. de Ayora Km. 72
Ap. Correus 70
02071 - Albacete

Zigor was the last of the Catalans to be related to ETA activity by the police after the arrests made in January 2001 in Barcelona of three of the members of the group.

On the 21st January 2001 various newspapers and news programmes stated that the police were looking for him. The next day he voluntarily handed himself in to the authorities and was seen by a judge at the Audiencia Nacional (Spanish Crown Court ) in Madrid to clarify the situation. The accusation against him makes him responsible for putting ETA members in contact with Diego. This however, is non-sensical because Zigor had already been arrested a few years back in relation to ETA and was probably under surveillance, and therefore it seems it would be stupid of him to attempt any contact with ETA members

The judge took his statement and told him that no warrant was against him. Zigor pleaded not guilty to all the charges, but the judge decided to provisionally imprison him based on 3 facts:
- A statement made by Diego under torture during his arrest which connected him with ETA.
-The risk that he might abscond..
- And the possibility that his freedom might hinder further investigations.

His trial didn`t take place until the 6th-8th of October 2003 when he was sentenced to 9 year imprisonment for ETA membership. Since he was imprisoned Zigor had been moved from one prison to another, on one occasion staying in four different prisons over a period of two weeks. Zigor also went on hunger strike for 32 days in March 2004 with other political prisoners to protest at their poor situation in prison

Dolores Lopez Resines
Maison d´Arrêt de Fresne
allée des Thuyas,
94261 Fresnes Cedex
Estat Francès

Carolina Forné Roig
C.P. Ávila, Ctra. Vicolozano-Brieva, s/n, 05194 Brieva, Avila.

Rafael Tomás y Gaspar
C.P. Madrid III, Ctra. Pinto a San Martín de la Vega, km 5, 28340 Valdemoro, Madrid.

Igor Quevedo Aragay
C.P. Madrid V, Soto del Real, Apdo. 200, Colmenar Viejo 28791, Madrid.

Joaquin Garces Villacampa
C.P. Madrid IV, Ctra. Nacional V km 27,7 28600 Navalcarnero, Madrid