Supreme Court ties off early release loophole
Early exit of ETA bomber from jail prompts review of penal system
The legal criteria followed by the High Court to let a convicted terrorist out of jail early was incorrect, according to the Supreme Court.
This higher tribunal has now corrected the penal system to avoid further cases like that of Antonio Troitiño, one of ETA's bloodiest members, who was sentenced to 2,232 years in prison for a July 1986 bomb attack in Madrid that killed 11 police officers.
Troitiño walked out of prison last Wednesday after serving 24 of the maximum 30 years he could have been detained for by law. His early release was made possible by a Constitutional Court ruling from 2008 that allowed inmates to earn credit on their full sentence in a given case by calculating the time they spent in preventive custody while awaiting sentencing in other cases.
