Altsasu, a sleepy Basque town in Spain's northernmost province of Navarre, was shocked on July 4, when a prosecutor's office announced (PDF) that eight of its residents will be facing a total of 375 years in prison on terrorism charges. The eight young Basques had a fight with two civil guards and their girlfriends in a local bar in the early hours of October 15, 2016. Three of the defendants have been under arrest since November 2016.
The eight young men and a woman are facing charges of "terrorist injury" and "terrorist threat" for being involved in what many activists consider a simple "bar brawl", possibly motivated by historical tensions between Basque nationalists and the Civil Guard. [...]
According to the Civil Guard and a considerable number of conservative Spanish newspapers, anyone who demands the withdrawal of the guards from Altsasu, including the eight young Basques involved in last year's "bar brawl", are part of the "ETA environment".
According to human rights activists, however, such accusations are nothing more than an extension of the Spanish judiciary and government's controversial theory dubbed "everything is ETA". [...]
Both the regional government of Navarre and the city council of Altsasu have already rejected the "terrorism" charges eight young Basques are facing. The provincial court also decided that the "bar fight" between the defendants and the members of the Civil Guard did not amount to "terrorism" and insisted that the case should be conducted locally. But the Spanish National Court chose to override the decisions of local authorities and charged the defendants with offences related to "terrorism" anyway.
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