Common sense prevails

From Times Online
March 01, 2007
Hunger strike Eta prisoner released from hospital custody
Inaki de Juana Chaos

Thomas Catán, Madrid and Devika Bhat

An Eta prisoner on hunger-strike for 114 days has been released from a hospital in Madrid and taken to a clinic in the Basque region, The Times has been told, in what is understood to be the first step to allowing him to serve the rest of his sentence at home under police supervision.

Iñaki De Juana Chaos, one of the Basque separatist group's most notorious killers, was taken by ambulance to a hospital close to the Basque city of San Sebastian, according to local media reports.

He is then expected to be put under house arrest to serve the last year of his sentence for making threats at home under police supervision, having already completed an 18-year sentence for heading a cell responsible for killing 25 soldiers and policemen in the 1980s.

The decision to free de Juana Chaos is likely to spark uproar among victims of the armed Basque separatist group. More than 75,000 people held a rally in Madrid last weekend to demand his continued imprisonment. Several people were injured when a rival rally in Bilbao by his supporters was broken up by riot police.
Background

* Eta killer's deathbed plea for peace

* Madrid’s Dilemma

* Uproar over early release for Eta hunger-striker

Supporters of De Juana Chaos said yesterday that he could no longer stand and would enter a coma if his blood sugar dropped any lower. They said he had managed to rip-out his feeding tube three times on Tuesday, as prison authorities struggled to replace it.

Senior figures from the ruling Socialist Party have apparently been laying the groundwork for his release for days, saying that allowing him to die would merely hand Eta a “martyr”.

“There are many people around (De Juana Chaos) that hope he dies,” said José Blanco, the Socialist Party secretary. “I don’t wish anyone to die, I have a respect for life that terrorists do not.”

The leader of the Opposition Popular Party, Mariano Rajoy, said that “the worst possible scenario” in the case was for the Government to “cede to the blackmail of terrorists”. He said that tens, or hundreds of other Eta prisoners could follow suit.