Ongi etorri, Arnaldo Otegi!

SINN FÉIN representatives have warmly welcomed the release this week of Basque pro-independence leader Arnaldo Otegi from prison in Logroño after six and a half years.

Sinn Féin Assembly member Pat Sheehan said the release of Otegi on 1 March is an opportunity to advance the peace process in the Basque Country.

“Arnaldo Otegi was one of the main architects of the peace strategy developed by the Basque pro-independence movement and should never have been imprisoned,” the former H-Blocks hunger striker said.

● Pat Sheehan at the Free Otegi mural in Belfast

MEP Martina Anderson added her congratulations, said she was delighted that Arnaldo Otegi was being welcomed home by his family and community “and I send warm congratulations to him from Sinn Féin”.

The Irish MEP said Sinn Féin also welcomed the news that Arnaldo Otegi has confirmed he will take part in internal party elections later this month seeking to stand as a candidate for EH Bildu.

Since the 1990s, Arnaldo Otegi has been acknowledged as the leader of the Basque pro-independence political movement and he has also faced unrelenting political persecution by Spanish authorities. Spanish authorities sought to restrict rallies welcoming Otegi's release from prison.

● Rally to welcome home Arnaldo Otegi

Among the political charges that have been brought against him include being sentenced to jail in 2006 for participating in a commemoration marking the murder of an ETA leader by a Spanish death squad in 1978, and being jailed again in 2010 for comparing a long-term ETA prisoner to Nelson Mandela.

In 2005, Otegi was sentenced for “insulting the king” after he commented at a press conference about the torture of Basque journalists that the King of Spain bore ultimate responsibility for this torture as the official head of Spain's armed forces. In March 2011, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Spain had infringed Otegi’s right to freedom of expression in this case.

In October 2009, ten central leaders of the Basque pro-independence movement, including Otegi, were arrested as they met to discuss a new peace initiative; five of them were jailed. Despite such provocation, this peace initiative led to the permanent ETA ceasefire of 2011 and its move in 2014 to begin the process of disarmament. It has also led to the legal registration of new pro-independence party, Sortu, in 2013, which has rejected violence and reached unprecedented levels of popular support in the Basque Country.

Martina Anderson spoke at the launch last March of the international campaign to free Otegi, which was endorsed by several former Latin American presidents and Nobel Prize winner Desmond Tutu, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, among many others.

“As well as being acknowledged as the leader of the Basque pro-independence movement, Otegi is also indisputably the leader of the Basque peace process, and that is why he was jailed in 2011,” she said.

“I warmly welcome the release of Arnaldo Otegi and offer him our full support in his efforts to develop the Basque peace process. The Spanish Government should finally engage with this process. It should release all seriously-ill prisoners and those who have been jailed for purely political work, and immediately repatriate all Basque prisoners to prisons within the Basque Country as the first step towards an early-release programme.”

Pat Sheehan added:

“Sinn Féin is convinced the release of Arnaldo Otegi will invigorate efforts to create a lasting peace and self-determination for the Basque people, and Sinn Féin will continue to provide assistance in bringing that about.”