Argentine vice president visits Spain and questions legal reform that would benefit terrorists

Published:

9 Oct 2024 03:51 GMT

Victoria Villarruel affirmed that thanks to certain “political agreements”, a group of convicted former ETA members will achieve a reduction in their sentences, in reference to a reform approved in the Congress of Deputies of Spain.

The vice president of Argentina, Victoria Villarruel, participated this Tuesday in Spain at the International Conference of the United Nations (UN) on victims of terrorism, and spoke out against the Spanish legal reform that benefits former convicted members of the terrorist group ETA.

“While we are gathered here, dozens of ETA terrorists benefit from the reduction of their sentences thanks to political agreements,” said the vice president during her speech, reported The Nation.

With this he referred to a legislative modification that is being processed in the Spanish Parliament, and that could imply that more than 40 prisoners belonging to ETA are released or recovered early.

“There are power groups and politicians that justify terrorism,” said Villarruel and considered that “there is always a political interest behind each attack”.

According to the also head of the Argentine Senate, “the purpose” of these acts is always similar: “to cause political changes in governments in a certain direction, or to condition, or prevent them from freely deciding their course.”

“Complete justice”

As a lawyer, and before becoming vice president, Villarruel was characterized as a fervent promoter of the request for “complete justice.” This slogan demands that former members of armed political organizations that operated in the 1970s in Argentina be tried and convicted for attacks on members of the armed forces, which also had civilians as victims.

In August, when announcing that the Government would reopen “all the cases of the victims of terrorism”, the second in the Executive affirmed that “all the Montoneros” (name of the defunct left-wing Peronist armed group) “must be imprisoned.”

The reform of organic law 7/2014 was unanimously approved in the Congress of Deputies of Spain, from where it passed to the Senate without any amendment. For this reason, it is expected that the vote of the upper house will be favorable and, if so, only its publication in the Official State Gazette (BOE) would remain.