Early this morning the man shown in this photo was released from prison after 21 years. Geeze, that's a long time to be jailed. Maybe. How about if you have killed 25 people? Is that long enough? Most people would think not. Ignacio Juana de Chaos (the irony of his last name is rather cruel), a leading ETA terrorist is back on the streets. How it is that even having been sentenced to thousands of years (literally) in prison he gets out after 21 is a story involving the quirks of Spanish legislation that I only vaguely understand and thus could not fully explain. I know it has to do with sentences being served concurrently, having a 30 year maximum regardless of the sentence, and getting lots and lots of years taken off for doing university course work while in prison. (This legislation was modified in 2003. One wonders why it took them so darn long.) Rehabilitated? Are you kidding–he continued to threaten all kinds of people from prison and from what I've read appears to be a truly violent psychopath. From 1985 to 1986 de Chaos was involved in a series of terrorist attacks that ranks him as one of the most blood-stained murderers in Spanish history. And now he's a free man. And to rub salt into the wound, this man intends to live in San Sebastian in the same apartment building as the widow of one of his victims. What would happen if I ran into him on the street? I don't know, but I don't think I could keep quiet, just pretend that it's ok. It's not o.k., it's a great perversion of justice. Unbelievable. Below the list of people killed by Juana Chaos and his associates. You might notice there is one non-Hispanic name in the list: Eugene Kent Brown. He was an executive for Johnson & Johnson working in Madrid at the time of his death. He was out jogging early one morning and was in the wrong place at the wrong time-running by when a car bomb went off. Vicente Romero
Juan García Jiménez
Esteban del Amo
Fausto Escrigas Estrada
Eugene Kent Brown
Juan Carlos González
Vicente Javier Domínguez
Juan José Catón Vázquez
Juan Mateos Pulido
Alberto Alonso Gómez
Ricardo Saenz de Ynestrillas
Carlos Vesteiro Pérez
Francisco Casillas Martín
Jesús María Freixes
Santiago Iglesias Rodino
Carmelo B. Alamo
Miguel A. Cornejo Ros
José Calvo Gutiérrez
Andrés José Fernández Pertierra
Antonio Lancharro Reyes
José Joaquín García Ruiz
Jesús Gimeno Gimeno
Juan Ignacio Calvo Guerrero
Javier Esteban
Angel de la Higuera López
All this story is sick, it´s just sick.
ReplyDeleteI don´t care if someone has finish a carrier at jail or not, if he haven´t finish his sentence, and the most important, is not rehabilitated or feel ashamed of what he has done, can not come out 2980 years earlier of what he was sentenced.
As an extra, less than a year per victim is an insult.
Thanks for your comment. Yes, it does seem sick. (Ironically, the penal code under which Juan Chaos was sentenced was leftover from the Franco regime.)
ReplyDeleteM.A.
The law is the way it is in each country. And in order to change it, it has a process.
ReplyDeleteRehabilitation? Are you kidding? At least in spain has no effect on rehabilitation. As in many countries you could enter being not guilty (or convicted by minor crime) and leave it being a real risk to society due to be jailed without rehabilitation programs that work.
btw, you don't seem to know too much about Basque prisoners. They are moved from prison to prison separated from his families (and not only the armed wing members, also pure politics). Each 15 months a relative or friend of those political prisoners die in the roads going to visit their beloved ones, thanks to spanish goverment for its basques prisoners dispersion over spanish "imperium".
Maybe you should read about Parot Doctrine, which is mainly what is applied right now there. And let me say this, It's insane specially now when ETA has asked for the goverment reaction if they leave it the arms, and the response of the goverment was to jail the political leaders who were working on a dialogued peace process.
Sad, but the statal parties want the conflict going on because is a nice way to obtain votes. Really sad
What is sad is that they do not torture ETA members when they are captured. They do not kill them either. If I were president of Spain I would order the killing of all new ETA convicts, torture to some. I live in the Basque Country, my family has suffered a lot because of ETA. It is the only way they will stop, torturing the convicts so badly that people will be scared and will stop supporting ETA. Or mass killings to all ETA prisoners.
ReplyDelete