Josu Urrutikoetxea Bengoetxea A HISTORIC FIGURE OF PEACE IN THE BASQUE COUNTRY DEPRIVED OF LIBERTY On 16 May 2019, Josu Urrutikoetxea Bengoetxea was arrested in a public hospital in Sallanches (HauteSavoie) while receiving emergency treatment for a serious illness. The following day, he was incarcerated at the Penitentiary Health Centre in Paris, where he is still being held. His arrest is not good news for those who have been working for several years in the Basque Country and internationally to put an end to the last and oldest armed conflict in Western Europe. Josu Urrutikoetxea has been responsible for promoting the debate on ending the violence, and making possible the disarmament and dissolution of ETA. Without his strong involvement, and that of others like him, this change would have been impossible to achieve.
A LEADING POLITICAL ROLE As early as the early 1980s, he established contacts with the Spanish government in order to set up the Algiers peace negotiations (in 1989.) This did not prevent the French government, at the beginning of January of the same year, from calling him to Bayonne when ETA announced, at the request of the Spanish state, a unilateral truce prior to the opening of these talks. In 1996, having served a 7 year sentence on French territory, he was then, against all expectations, deported to Spain, where he spent four further years in pre-trial detention, without any proceedings being brought against him. In 1998, from his Spanish prison, and in 2001, then free, he was elected twice to the Parliament of the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country. From June 2005 to September 2006, he played a leading role, in full view of all the international community, in the Geneva negotiation process with the socialist government of José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, under the protection of international organisations and the Swiss and Norwegian governments. He was the linchpin of the ‘agreement-in-principle’ reached with the representatives of the Spanish Government. Later he was centrally involved in the Aiete International Peace Conference in San Sebastian. This conference, chaired by Nobel Peace Prize winner Kofi Annan, provided, among other things, for the definitive cessation of all armed action - a proclamation that would take place three days later, on 20 October 2011. Between 2011 and 2013, during the Oslo negotiations, under the protection of the Norwegian government, Josu Urrutikoetxea Bengoetxea was the main interlocutor with the Spanish authorities. On 3 May 2018, it was through Josu Urrutikoetxea Bengoetxea's voice that the announcement was made to international community at the Henry Dunant Centre in Geneva that ETA would dissolve itself. Today, in defiance of all elementary diplomatic rules that apply in times of conflict, the French state has choosen to lock up this leading political actor.
PEACEMAKERS At the international level, figures such as Josu Urrutikoetxea Bengoetxea, Gerry Adams or Nelson Mandela are veterans who have had the height of vision to sit around a table with yesterday's opponents in order to find a lasting solution to the conflicts in their respective countries. In order to do so, they had first and foremost to make considerable efforts to convince their own side of the need to think about ways out of these conflicts. But could one imagine, in South Africa, in June 1991, once the pillars of the apartheid laws had been abolished, that the future Nobel Peace Prize winner, Nelson Mandela, would be put back in prison? Is it conceivable, in Northern Ireland, in April 1998, in the aftermath of the Good Friday Agreement, that a Gerry Adams would be arrested in Belfast and put in solitary confinement? However, in France, it is indeed this pernicious scenario that we are now witnessing with worry and dismay. By privileging this criminal justice approach and refusing to recognize the efforts undertaken to end the violent confrontation, the French government risks sending a dangerous message, that peace can only be built by force and coercion. This may have the reverse effect of encouraging some to call into question their commitment to nonviolent dialogue in the short or medium term.
AN ANXIOUS JUSTICE On 19 June 2019, the Paris Court of Appeal ordered the release of Josu Urrutikoetxea Bengoetxea under judicial supervision, considering his guarantees of representation sufficiently substantial for him to present himself as a free man during the various proceedings he faces. However, when the prison administration had just notified the lifting of Josu Urrutikoetxea Bengoetxea's detention, on the orders of the Public Prosecutor's Office, DGSI agents immediately arrested him again in the very precincts of the Penitentiary Health Centre. This unfair intervention by the public prosecutor's office was intended to prevent the application of a court decision, whereas the examination of European arrest warrants and extradition procedures did not require any deprivation of liberty. The fact that a sovereign judicial decision is immediately swept aside by executive intervention is a matter of deep concern in a democracy. Over and above the questions of pure law inherent in the European arrest warrant and extradition procedures, the case of Josu Urrutikoetxea Bengoetxea challenges us to think about the decisive question. Because Josu Urrutikoetxea Bengoetxea's destiny does not only concern the Basque Country, Spain and France, it also concerns all the peoples and territories at war, for whom this unilateral - and unprecedented - resolution is a model and a source of hope.
AN ETHICAL QUESTION If the French government decide to keep Josu Urrutikoetxea Bengoetxea in prison, or worse, to extradite him to Spain, would this not, in defiance of human rights, be a very bad signal to the peace process in the Basque Country that this same man has largely contributed to forging? The situation facing Josu Urrutikoetxea Bengoetxea risks setting a negative precedent by calling into question the guarantee of legal and diplomatic security for anyone involved in negotiations for the
resolution of armed conflict. In this case it cannot be denied that he has, through his investment and participation in the peace process, contributed to human rights diplomacy. The criminalization of those who have actively contributed to conflict transformation is both ethically problematic and strategically counterproductive. Moreover, it sends a very bad signal to all ongoing processes around the world. Beyond the specific case of the Basque Country, France is undermining all international standards inherent in conflict resolution processes, despite the fact that it is precisely this role of constructive facilitator that France wishes to take on at the international level that is undermined.
