Luxembourg, 4 June 2010, 10585/10 – PRESSE 160
The EU Justice Ministers today welcomed the agreement reached last week in the Permanent Representatives Committee on the draft directive on the rights to interpretation and to translation in criminal proceedings. The text was negotiated in recent weeks between representatives of the Council, the European Parliament and the Commission.
The directive is based on an initiative taken by 13 Member States (Belgium, Germany, Estonia, Spain, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Hungary, Austria, Portugal, Romania, Finland and Sweden) further to an agreement that was unanimously reached by the Council in October 2009 in respect of a Commission proposal launched in July 2009. The text also takes account of a proposal that was submitted by the Commission in March of 2010.
Reuters – 1 March 2010
A Belfast judge on Monday ordered the extradition to Spain of a former leader of Basque separatist group ETA to face a charge of justifying terrorism.
Jose Ignacio De Juana Chaos has seven days to appeal against the extradition, Judge Tom Burgess said.
De Juana, 54, is alleged to have committed the offence of “public justification of terrorist acts” in August 2008 at a gathering in San Sebastian, Spain, to mark his release from jail.
He had just served 21 years for his part in 25 murders during ETA’s campaign of violence.
The judge rejected claims by De Juana’s lawyers he would not be given a fair trial in Spain or that he could be tried for any offence other than detailed in the European arrest warrant under which he has been held in Belfast.
De Juana, who was leader of ETA’s Madrid commando, appeared in court in an orange T-shirt bearing the slogan in Spanish “Where is Jon?” — a reference to ETA member Jon Antza who disappeared in France last year and is feared dead by his colleagues. ETA is held responsible for the deaths of more than 800 people in its 40-year campaign to carve out an independent Basque state in northern Spain and southwestern France.
The Basque Country already has considerable political autonomy from Madrid and one of the leading members of ETA’s banned political wing Batasuna has called on the rebsl to lay down their arms.
ETA has had close links to the Irish Republican Army, which has disarmed.
AFP – 25 February 2010
Portuguese authorities said on Thursday they would extradite two suspected members of the militant Basque separatist group ETA to Spain.
The two men were held in northern Portugal on January 10 after fleeing a police check in Spain.
During the operation, the Spanish Civil Guard seized a van containing arms, weapons and explosives.
Portuguese officials held the two men, Garikoitz Garcia Arrieta and Iratxe Yanez Ortiz de Barron, in preventative custody in Lisbon on suspicion of terrorism, vehicle theft and falsifying documents.
A spokesman for the Court of Appeal in Lisbon told AFP on Thursday “the two suspected ETA members are going to be extradited”.
Madrid had issued a European arrest warrant for the pair.
Early this month police in the central Portuguese town of Obidos uncovered an ETA arms cache containing several hundred kilos of explosives.
Spain has expressed concerns that ETA may have moved its logistical operations to Portugal.
ETA is blamed for nearly 830 deaths in its 41-year armed struggle for independence for the Basque region of northern Spain and southwest France and is considered a terrorist organisation by the European Union and United States.