Diez, Otegi's leave granted for appeal to Constitutional Court

Spain's Constitutional Court, the highest in the country, decided on Thursday to grant Arnaldo Otegi and Rafa Diez an appeal in the Bateragune case.

Former Batasuna spokesman Arnaldo Otegi and the ex-Secretary General of the Basque nationalist trade union LAB Rafa Diez had appealed against a Supreme Court ruling that reduced to six years a ten-year sentence but kept them in prison.

Otegi and Diaz had been sentenced to ten years in prison on charges of belonging to ETA and for trying to reform an outlawed political group.

The court found them guilty of belonging to a select group within the ranks of the nationalist left; that "in full collusion and following orders received from ETA, of which they formed a part, they were designing a strategy in order to build up nationalist forces."

The sentence ruled that in 2008 ETA ordered Otegi and Díez to create a body that would act as its political wing. Although the court ruled that the Prosecutor had not proven beyond doubt that the resulting body was Bateragune, it accepted as proven that ETA sent orders to the members of that group "to plan and manage a new strategy for combining nationalist forces."

Otegi and the four other convicted members were found to have "received direct orders from ETA". The court based its conclusion on evidence of meetings held by the accused at the LAB headquarters, trips made to France in order to meet with people with links to ETA and documentation in which the armed group are seen to be passing on orders of a political nature.