Basque Info 22/12/10

This week and the next one the radio station where Basque Info is produced will be closed for the Christmas holidays but we'll have a new podcast on the 5th of January.

In brief:

• The six youth activists arrested last Thursday told the judge who sent them to jail that they had been tortured by the Spanish police while held in incommunicado detention. They were constantly beaten, suffocated with plastic bags, insulted, threatened and two of them even sexually abused. The two lawyers also arrested were released on an €18,000€ bail. Basque nationalist parties strongly criticised the Spanish authorities over the operation and demanded the right to be pro-independence political activists without the threat of torture and imprisonment. They also said the Spanish government should be helping instead of attacking a conflict resolution process.
• Last Thursday the French authorities decided to extradite Batasuna’s spokesperson Aurore Martin to Spain. This is the first time an extradition request for someone who officially is a “French national” and an activist of a legal political party from the north of the Basque Country (under French administration) has been accepted. Politicians from all parties have protested the decision. In turn, Aurore Martin has gone underground “to continue with (her) political work in Batasuna to promote a democratic process in the Basque Country”.
• Thousands of people took part in 109 picket lines across the Basque Country to demand the legalization of the Basque Pro-Independence Left last weekend.
• On Saturday hundreds more traveled to the Spanish jail of Logroño where Basque Pro-Independence Left leader Arnaldo Otegi is imprisoned. They marched up to the prison walls and released balloons trailing banners to demand “Free Otegi, free politics”. Three supporters were attacked and badly beaten by a Spanish fascist gang nearby and one of the victims who happens to be from Logroño himself is still in a severe condition in hospital.