French justice on Wednesday gave its approval for the extradition to Spain of the former head of ETA logistics, Félix Ignacio Esparza Luri, to be tried for the attack on the barracks in Santa Pola (Alicante) in 2002, in which there were two dead and dozens injured.
The president of the investigation chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal specified that it will be a “deferred” surrender, meaning that its formalisation will be suspended until the sentence imposed on the ETA member in France, where he is serving his sentence in Lannemezan prison, between Tarbes and Toulouse.
In any case, Esparza Luri, who is 60 years old, has requested to finish serving his French sentence, which ends in 2027, in a Spanish prison to be closer to his family, a privilege the families of the victims of the terrorist organisation do not have.
The decision by the investigating court to authorise Spain to put him in the dock is a response to the European arrest warrant issued against him by the National Court of Madrid, which charged him with two terrorist murders (punishable by up to 30 years in prison each), 55 attempted terrorist murders (20 years) and terrorist devastation (20 years).
In the car bomb attack that exploded next to the Santa Pola Guardia Civil station on 4 August 2002, in which a man who was nearby and the 6-year-old daughter of an officer died, Esparza Luri is not accused of being one of the perpetrators of the attack. That is why ETA members Oscar Zelarain and Andoni Otegi were sentenced in 2012 to a total of 843 years in prison. But the National Court considers that members of the executive committee of the terrorist organisation ordered the attack and charged six ETA leaders at the time.
