Supreme Court overturns Iparragirre’s acquittal for 1997 Oviedo attack

He High Council has annulled the acquittal of the former member of ETA Marisol Iparragirre for the attack on the Buenavista National Police Headquarters in Oviedo in 1997, and has ordered the National audience to dictate a new sentence, given the “lack of coherence” of the previous one.

It is the second acquittal that the Supreme Court has overturned Iparragirre, having previously reversed the Supreme Court ruling that acquitted her of a frustrated 1985 car bomb attack outside the Mendizorroza sports center, in Vitoria-Gasteiz, for a “serious error” when evaluating a test. The new sentence sentenced her to 425 years in prison.

Now the same thing is happening again. The National Court acquitted her of three counts of attempted murder, havoc and wounding caused by a grenade attack on the Oviedo police station, deeming it “res judicata”, having previously been convicted in France as ETA leader and for preparing attacks in Spain while in the French country.

But the Supreme Court upholds the prosecution’s appeal and orders the National Court to hand down a new sentence by warning of the “significant motivational cracks” and “lack of coherence” of the previous one, reviewing certain evidence that ruled it out at the time. This evidence is an expert intelligence report from the Guardia Civil about the events and the statement of one of the ETA members already convicted of the same attack, Kepa Arronategi.

In the latter case, the prosecution’s disagreement centered on the inconsistency represented by the fact that the same verdict speaker who questioned the validity of the initial incriminating testimony endorsed that same statement in the verdict condemning Arronategi himself.

The National Court verdict had the singular voice of a magistrate who favored sentencing Iparagirre to 71 years in prison when she disagreed with her two roommates in the decision to exclude the two tests mentioned.