No attention was paid to the testimony of four witnesses that the two had not been present at the shooting of the Civil Guard with which they were charged. The court also disregarded the argument of the defence that the 'confession' wrung from Garmendia by torture the basis of the stace's case — was invalid because he had suffered permanent brain damage as a result of being shot in the head while being arrested, and was mentally incapable of understandingthe meaning of any statement he had signed.
The state was not interested in such details, because it was using the two simply as scapegoats. Its real target was the entire Basque people.
The Spanish dictatorship is fearful of its future. Franco is living out his last days, and the regime he created is in danger of coming apart at the seams when he leaves the political scene. His cronies are terrified of the prospect that the working class will take advantage of this crisis to wage the sort of militant fight for freedom and democracy that the Portuguese working class is engaged in. They therefore want to break the spirit of the most militant section of the working class - centred in the Basque country - before this crisis begins. The Spanish dietatorship has decided on the brutal murder of two anti-fascist militants from the Basque country - Jose Garmendia and Angel Otaegui, sentenced to death by garroting last week. The 'trial' that decided the fate was a farce typical of the repressive Franco regime. It was held before a military tribunal, because no jury would have handed down the verdiet the regime wanted. It lasted only five hours, be because the regime had already decided the verdiet and the punishment.
will allow the regime to cast its net still wider and rope in still more victims.
more, rather than less, inevitable. 'crisis, ushering in its downfall.
The head of last Saturday's 1,000-strong solidarity demonstration in London through their bloodthirsty plan, but ruling class circles in Spain are deeply riddled with fear and doubt. Big sections of the Spanish capitalists and their political spokesmen believe that the policy of repression is disastrous -that it can only serve to postpone the day of reckoning a short while further, and will fuel the hatred of the Spanish masses for the fascist state, making a 'Portuguese' type explosion The Spanish working class has shown its determination to fight the forces of fascist terror with its bare hands. If this can be backed up by the sort of mass international solidarity that greeted the Burgos sentences, Garmendia and Otaegui could be saved, and the very last. whole rotten fascist dietatorship plunged into JOSE ANTONIO GARMENDIA demand must be taken up by everybody within the British labour movement, and we must call on the Labour Government as a whole to take an official stand against this brutal attack on the Spanish working class.