Dublin - A former Spanish Minister for Justice and his deputy were yesterday instructed to begin serving the 10-year jail sentences imposed on them by the Supreme Court last July, Paddy Woodworth writes. The court rejected their requests for stays of execution.
Mr Jose Barrionuevo and Mr Rafael Vera have both appealed to the Constitutional Court against their conviction for participating in the kidnapping of Mr Segundo Marey in 1983. This was the first operation in a dirty war against ETA, organised by members of the security forces in the GAL (Antiterrorist Liberation Groups), in which 27 people were killed.
No minister has been jailed in Spain since the Franco period, and the case has sparked a deeply divisive row between the Socialist Party, which was then in power, and the ruling Partido Popular. The Socialists accuse the current government of manipulating the trial, and the former Socialist prime minister, Mr Felipe Gonzalez, has pledged to defend his former colleagues in court as a lawyer, and to support their appeal to the European Court of Human Rights if necessary.