AP News, March 2nd, 2007
Spanish authorities moved a hunger-striking ETA prisoner from a Madrid hospital to one in the Basque region Thursday as a first step toward allowing him to serve the remainder of his sentence at home under custody.
The prisoner, Jose Ignacio de Juana Chaos, responded to the government gesture by ending his hunger strike, according to Juan Mari Olano, spokesman for Askatasuna, an organization that seeks to help ETA prisoners. He said he was reading a message from the prisoner.
Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said he personally made the transfer decision, after consulting with judicial authorities, to avoid the death of the seriously ill de Juana Chaos, one of the Basque separatist group ETA's most notorious killers.
He had been on hunger strike for 114 days to protest his continuing imprisonment on a new, recent conviction for writing articles deemed as terrorist threats.
"I have the impression that, if I had not taken this decision, he would have died in prison in the next couple of weeks," the minister said.
The prisoner's move sparked protests by hundreds of people outside the Interior Ministry on Thursday night.
De Juana Chaos, 51, has been forced fed by means of a tube inserted into his nose for several months. Pictures of him looking emaciated and strapped by his hands and feet to his hospital bed were published in Spain and abroad last month.
"The state has to be humane even with those who did not act this way with their victims," Perez Rubalcaba said.
De Juana Chaos was taken by ambulance to a hospital near the Basque city of San Sebastian.
The minister said that, if de Juana Chaos recovered enough in the hospital, he would be taken home to serve out the remainder of his sentence under police custody.
The decision was immediately criticized by the leading conservative opposition Popular Party and the Association of Victims of Terrorism.
"Today (Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez) Zapatero has turned his back on the victims of terrorism," said Angel Acebes, a senior member of the Popular Party.
Both groups have staged numerous protests in recent years against De Juana Chaos' possible release and said the measure was tantamount to freeing De Juana Chaos.
The association said the decision was "one of the biggest betrayals of the victims and society."
De Juana Chaos has been in prison since 1987 for the deaths of 25 people in a series of ETA attacks. With time off for good behavior and other benefits, he was on the verge of release last year when he was charged anew over newspaper articles he wrote from prison that were deemed as threats of new attacks.
De Juana Chaos was convicted and got 13 years, and he resumed a hunger strike he had begun months earlier. But on Feb. 12, the Supreme Court reduced the sentence to three years.
As he has already been in jail 17 months since the new charges were filed _ more than half the sentence ordered _ he was eligible for parole.
The minister noted that de Juana Chaos is now serving time for the threat conviction, not the murders.
On Saturday, tens of thousands of people, including leading members of the Popular Party, protested the Supreme Court decision reducing the sentence, accusing the Socialist government of being soft on ETA.
There have been serious political divisions over the Socialist government's dealings with ETA. The group ended a nine-month cease-fire with a Dec. 30 bombing that killed two people at Madrid airport.
That caused the government to ditch plans for negotiations with ETA, but it refuses to rule out trying again at some point in the future, drawing severe criticism from conservatives.
ETA's political supporters cited de Juana Chaos' case as an example of the kind of judicial harassment they say derailed the peace process.
ETA has killed more than 800 people since 1968 in its bid for an independent Basque state.
