Top court to study ETA sentencing challenges

The full bench of the Constitutional Court on Tuesday will begin to study challenges to a national sentencing policy filed by lawyers for two dozen ETA prisoners who are demanding that the so-called Parot Doctrine be overturned.

Revocation of the policy in certain cases would mean that many dangerous Basque terrorists, who are serving time for multiple convictions, could be afforded early release. The Parot Doctrine, adopted by the Supreme Court in 2006, establishes that prison benefits should be applied to individual sentences and not to the 30-year maximum sentence, which the longest anyone can serve under Spanish law.

It was named for the case of French ETA terrorist Henri Parot, who has been in prison since 1990 after being sentenced to thousands of years through 26 separate sentences for 86 murders.

Besides the two dozen ETA challenges, four other petitions for review have been filed by inmates who are serving long sentences for drug trafficking and murder.

But the leading case in the wave of appeals is that of ETA inmate José Ignacio Gaztañaga Bidaurreta, the first prisoner after Parot who was applied the sentencing doctrine. Gaztañaga was to be released on March 29, 2006, but he was informed five days before this date that he won't be released until 2018 after the High Court conducted a review of the time served and applied the new formula.

Gaztañaga was sentenced in 1997 to 153 years in prison after being convicted of various murders, including one of a police officer.

In the past, Constitutional Court judges have reportedly been inclined not to declare the Parot Doctrine unconstitutional in a blanket decision to cover all the convicts, but instead look at each case on an individual basis.

The top court has set aside three days from Tuesday to begin studying the appeals.