Seven kilometres from Donostia lies Pasaia Bay, or Pasaiako badia in
Basque, an iconic place in the geography of Gipuzkoa. A gruesome crimetook place there in 1984. We are at the scene of the events, it is
around ten o'clock at night on 22 March. A zodiac approaches the centre
of Pasai Donibane, with five people and a dog on board. A lantern is
turned on and off three times from some nearby rocks. It is the signal
agreed with Rosa Jimeno to come and moor, there is no danger in sight.
The zodiac arrives at the location. In the darkness of the night they
throw a rope to Rosa to stabilise the boat. Two of the travellers get
off. Joseba Merino, who is the crew member of the motorised boat that
day, bends down to pick up his dog. He asks one of his companions to
help him, and when he does so for the second time, a loud and clear
"Stop, police" is heard. Without time to react, a shot crosses the bay.
Two seconds later, an endless burst of shots is heard. Two of the people
and the dog die instantly due to the multiple impacts. The other three
men have jumped into the water, escaping the carnage for the moment.
After a minute of trying to escape by swimming, they are arrested with
the help of two boats from the special underwater activities corps of
the Civil Guard. They have arrived quickly from the other shore with
spotlights with which they manage to stop the escapees. The three
detainees are identified on the same rocks. Joseba Merino is asked if he
is the colonel, to which he answers that he is simply Josua, giving a
false name. At gunpoint they separate him from the other two people, who
are identified as Rafael Delas, 'Txapas', and Dionisio Aizpiru, 'Kurro'.
After this, an agent pronounces the sentence with force, "you are going
to die." They are shot down with a new burst of gunfire. The execution
takes place to Joseba's astonishment. Rosa, who had a rope tied to her
feet, had been thrown to the ground at the beginning of the ambush and
then taken up to the upper walkway where most of the agents were
situated. Later, the other two people killed were identified: José Mari
Izura 'Pelu' and Pedro Mari Isart 'Pelitxo'.
To explain the context of what happened in Pasaia Bay, we must talk
about who these people were and the situation of those years. The
eighties are known as the years of lead. In an international context of
breaking with ossified patterns, various armed groups of different kinds
emerged all over the globe. In the Spanish state, ETA, GRAPO and GAL are
recognizable, a parapolice group created by the PSOE government in its
dirty war and the main exponent of state terrorism. Among the armed
groups, the Comandos Autónomos Anticapitalistas (CAA) are perhaps less
recognizable. Its members advocate greater horizontality in
decision-making and direct their struggle towards the liberation of the
international working class, although Basque independence is also among
its objectives. It does not share the Marxist-Leninist ideology of ETA,
nor the reformist path of the parties of the Basque left. Some of its
members have broken with these currents, while others are close to
anarchist positions, influenced above all by autonomism. They act
independently, something that generates a lot of enmity, even within the
Basque independence movement.
The gang was active from the late seventies until 1984, when they
finally dissolved without any official announcement. A month before the
ambush, the CAA had decided to assassinate Enrique Casas, a PSOE
senator, member of the UGT and candidate for the Basque Parliament. They
justified this act by considering Casas one of the main supporters of
the GAL (Anti-Terrorist Liberation Groups). Later, Ricardo García
Damborenea, general secretary of the PSOE in Vizcaya, confirmed before
Judge Garzón that the precursors of this armed group had been José
Barrionuevo, Rafael Vera, Txiqui Benegas, Julián Sancristóbal, Ramón
Jauregui and Enrique Casas, in addition to Damborenea himself. He also
pointed out that the main person responsible had been Felipe González,
president of the Spanish government.
The murder of Casas was heavily criticised by nationalist circles, who
feared a response from the Spanish state or the loss of electoral
advantage in the case of the reformists. After this crime, which
surprised the state, since they did not expect that the Autonomous
Commandos could reach one of the visible heads of the PSOE, the revenge
that culminated in Pasaia Bay began to take shape.
In their first investigations, the police located a car linked to the
Commandos that could lead them to one of its members, regardless of the
fact that these had nothing to do with the murder of Casas. They put the
car under surveillance until 18 March 1984, when Rosa Jimeno went to
move it to Donostia. The young woman was arrested immediately, carrying
a French telephone with her name on it. At the police station, her
arrest was not notified; an anti-terrorist law had just come into force,
by which a person could be held for seven days without proof or
notification of any kind to lawyers or family members. Later, the period
would be increased to ten days. The virulence of this legal kidnapping
by the state was applied especially in the Basque territory due to the
Plan for the Special Northern Zone, drawn up by José Barrionuevo,
Minister of the Interior for the PSOE. The application of this plan
resulted in countless tortures and dozens of murders. I recommend at
this point the documentary Carpetas Azules (Blue Carpets) which talks
about the thousands of tortures committed over the years by the
"democratic" Spanish police, especially in the Basque territory. It is
heartbreaking to listen to some of the statements. For her part, Rosa
reported having been subjected to beatings, electrodes, the bathtub or
constant physical and psychological humiliation. The torture went as far
as being forced to call her parents' house to say that she was at the
house of a pregnant friend who needed help. She also did the same at her
workplace. She did it with a gun to her head by her kidnappers. Her
parents must have noticed something in her tone of voice and went to the
police station a few hours later, they did not believe the version that
their daughter had given them. There they were notified that there was
no woman detained with that name and indeed there was, Rosa had been
registered under another name. The torture went as far as threatening to
kill her seven-year-old nephew, which broke Rosa definitively. Because
she was carrying her phone, she was forced to arrange a meeting with
'Kurro', her partner, who at that time lived in the French state,
specifically in Ziburu. The zodiac would leave from there on the night
of the 22nd. Rosa would be the bait for the ambush. In exchange for
betrayal, the police promised not to harm the detainees as long as they
did not shoot. Rosa began to suspect that they would not keep their word
when she saw how they loaded the arsenal of weapons at the police station.
Rosa was unable to confirm the death of her companions until days later.
Several agents initially told her that they had not killed anyone, but
she could not believe it given the number of shots she heard. Joseba
Merino has always maintained that he was not killed along with the rest
of his companions because they needed someone to bear the penalty for
Casas' murder. Furthermore, he was responsible for the infrastructure of
the Commandos and with his arrest they might be able to obtain more
information about other members of the group. In his defence strategy,
Joseba argued that he had not been in Pasaia Bay, but when he was
sentenced to 53 years in relation to Casas' murder, he spoke about the
massacre that took place in Pasaia in 1984. By the way, Pablo Pego Gude,
the alleged killer of Senator Casas, would be killed by the Civil Guard
that same year.
After the ambush, the police created a mud machine that distorted what
had happened there. The bodies were not removed from the scene, it was
800 metres away and there was no forensic judge present. The police in
their report claimed that they opened fire from the zodiac and that they
had no other option but to shoot them. They did not provide evidence to
confirm this version, such as bullet casings or marks of gunshots in the
area where the officers were. To confirm their excuse, they brought a
young couple as auditory witnesses. These two people had been detained
before the ambush and could only confirm that they had heard a "Stop,
police" and countless shots. In later statements, one of these people
gave an interview in which he pointed out that they had not actually
heard anything and that the police forced them to give this version. In
turn, media such as ABC accepted the police version as valid, serving as
a media outlet for state terrorism.
In the autopsy, the coroner found 113 bullet holes distributed among the
bodies of the four young men. In addition, among the holes, there were
wounds from buckshot. That is, a projectile that launches an infinite
amount of ammunition in the form of shrapnel used in big game hunting
and which is illegal in the police. The lawyers of the families have
always maintained that there was a special guest in the revenge for the
death of Casas, a mysterious person who would bring his personal weapon
to the ambush. The version of the buckshot was confirmed by the family
of Rafael Delas. They denounced that when they went to give them the
properties of the murdered young man, they gave them a bag with the
shells of the buckshot and then, after arguing that it was a mistake,
they laughed at them, giving them their personal belongings. His sister
also recounts in the documentary Pasaiako Badia the calls received at
her home from the police to laugh at the death of 'Txapas'.
Among the irregularities committed and the vile humiliations, we must
also highlight the charges that the agents made at the burial of José
Mari Izura 'Pelu'. At the same time, the disappearance of the
photographs during the visual inspection of the crime scene or the video
they made during the autopsy are not explained. Evidence that could have
helped to clarify a case that the state never wanted to solve.
In addition to the 53 years that Joseba Merino was sentenced to, of
which she served 17, Rosa Jimeno spent three years in prison for
collaboration with an armed gang. The families and the town council of
Azpeitia, the town where two of the murdered youths came from, have
reopened the case on several occasions, trying to take it to the
Constitutional Court or the European Court of Human Rights in
Strasbourg. They have always been met with dismissal or neglect by the
judiciary. Needless to say, therefore, that none of the murderers was
tried for this massacre. Agent number 12983 declared that more than 100
police officers, GEOs from Guadalajara or the Civil Guard with special
corps such as the one for underwater activities had participated in the
action. Hundreds of people who never contributed more than the brief
official version given. In 1986, Joseba Merino read a report on an ETA
attack, in which there were photographs of several police officers,
among whom he identified one who had participated in the ambush in
Pasaia Bay. Joseba tried to report these people, providing the
photographs as evidence, but received the only answer that it was
impossible to identify them. Curious, to say the least, when the main
witness was already identifying them. Recently, after the case was
reopened, there was an identification parade, but Joseba did not
recognize anyone, something that, according to his public statement, he
had already expected. Either because among the agents who had taken the
identification parade there was no one who had been in Pasaia or because
forty years later it is very difficult to identify a person.
For its part, the Donostia court of instruction closed the case, stating
that there were four homicides committed by the police but that it was
not possible to prove who committed them. In addition, the Basque
government has spoken of "extrajudicial execution" and a "paradigmatic
case of serious violation of human rights" in a report commissioned by
the University of the Basque Country. Although justice was not done, the
social movements of Euskal Herria have not forgotten this massacre. On
the rocks where they were murdered, four white silhouettes remember the
unsolved crime. In addition, on the upper walkway, a plaque does not
forget them, although it has been torn off and vandalized on various
occasions. On it you can read "The people do not forgive." In turn, in
Azpeitia a monolith was created in their memory and every March 22nd
relatives and friends gather there to remember them.
It is important to point out here that what is sold as a state of law is
not such and that it is beyond the understanding of how people who buy
into the framework of social democracy accept this monopoly of
unrestricted violence by the state. A supposedly democratic state that
is capable of shooting civilians. Whatever the circumstances or actions
of these civilians, we cannot accept a framework in which the victims of
the state are forgotten, ignored and even their deaths are justified by
a large part of public opinion. Cases like these show that the law is
not applied equally to everyone. An example is the terrorists of the
GAL, whose members achieved state impunity and only served minor sentences.
Joseba Merino sums up his view of the case as follows: "The police are
the perpetrators in this case, as in other similar cases. They are only
the executing arm. If the police acted in this way, it is because the
commanders, following the instructions of the political leader on duty,
have authorized or indicated that they act in this way. Society does not
react and accepts that there are state crimes in the name of democracy."
Finally, it should be said that in 1987 the rock group Barricada
composed the well-known song Bahía de Pasaia, which gained greater
notoriety when it was censored by the group's own record company. From
that moment on, it began to be shared through pirated CDs until it
became a classic for the band. El Drogas, the group's singer and
composer, said that with his lyrics he wanted to show what happened that
tragic night. Partly he did this because years before he had met Rafael
Delas in Iruña, where another of the murdered members of the Autonomous
Commandos came from.
Andrés Cabrera, Impulso activist
https://www.regeneracionlibertaria.org/podcast/la-emboscada-de-la-bahia-de-pasaia-episodio-cinco/
_________________________________________
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