Defence lawyers dig in heels to denounce lack of support

The bench has decided to adjourn the trial for a week to give the defence counsel time to examine the documents
Edurne Begiristain - Special Correspondent, Madrid

The inability to fulfil the right to proper defence with all guarantees has exhausted the patience of the defence counsel in the 18/98 case and has prompted them to dig their heels in before the judges. It was the "situation of defencelessness" that the lawyers have been enduring since the start of the trial that has forced them to take this extreme decision. The ten defence lawyers decided to leave the court hearing yesterday for reasons of "professional deontology" (Pepe Uruñuela's defence lawyer Nines Lopez supported the request for the trial to be suspended but she did not join the rest in their protest).

In view of the lack of support, the defence lawyers appealed to the Chairman of the Bar Association of the BAC-Basque Autonomous Community and to senior lawyers of Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa for support yesterday morning. They also got more support than they requested because they also got the backing of the senior lawyer of Araba. As if that had not been enough, the Bar Association of the BAC sent a request to Angela Murillo, who is leading the team of judges, and to Carlos Divar, the chairman of the 3rd Chamber of the Spanish National Criminal Court, for a meeting to be held to discuss the irregularities they were suffering in the trial and seek a solution. During the afternoon session Kepa Landa told the bench that they would not be returning to the trial until the problems had been solved.

The decision by the defence counsel upset the bench and Murillo decided to adjourn the trial until next Monday. Murillo was aiming to give the defence counsel time to find certain documents belonging to the preparatory enquiries of the 75/89 indictment which the defence lawyers had requested during yesterday's session but which the judges had been unable to find. Yet the lawyers gave no assurances that they would be appearing in court on January 16, unless the Bar Association of the BAC is at least given assurances in the meantime that the trial can continue.

Right from the start of the session yesterday morning the central issue after the Christmas recess was the denunciation of the shortcomings, gaps and irregularities that the lawyers have been drawing attention to ever since the trial began. During yesterday's session Xabier Alegria, the last indictee in the section of the case pertaining to Orain [publishers of the newspaper Egin], was due to take the stand, but right from the start his defence counsel Arantxa Zulueta complained that they had not been given an opportunity to obtain the documents in the preparatory enquiries of the 75/89 case which have been kept sub judice.