The sympathy of the CDR with ETA: “I have a lot of respect for the people who have been in the armed struggle”

The Civil Guard captured conversations of a Barcelona Urban Guard at the top of the group praising the terrorists and accusing the State of planning the Islamist attack on Las Ramblas The agent of the Ciudad Condal accused the Police of “delivering free drugs in the streets to create insecurity” The Armed Institute warns in its reports of the radicalism of some members of public bodies, integrated in the CDR “I am so convinced to the point that I deserve a lot of respect for the people who have been in the armed struggle of ETA ”. The words, captured by the Civil Guard telephone intervention system, were recorded on May 23, 2019. On one side of the line, one of the alleged leaders of the Committees in Defense of the Republic (CDR) was listening, who nodded to these words of praise for the murderers of ETA. To the other, the applause was uttered by someone in uniform. An alleged defender of the Law. An agent of the Barcelona Urban Guard assigned to the Nou Barris police station and who, according to reports from the Civil Guard, also places him at the top of the radical group. In its reports to the National Court, the Civil Guard warns of the “exacerbated radicalization” of some of those investigated, and places this agent at the head of that section. In their conversations, the member of the Guardia Urbana assures that the Police “delivers drugs for free in the streets to create insecurity”, accuses the Spanish State of planning the jihadist attacks in Barcelona in 2017 in which 16 victims died (“If they were capable of carrying out the attack on the Ramblas are capable of doing that and much more”) and finally questions the guilt of the terrorist group ETA in their attacks. “Imagine what they did with ETA, how many things they have placed on them… the people who have been in ETA’s armed struggle deserve a lot of respect”, explains the agent in the intervened conversation. “Yes, of course, that’s obvious,” answered his interlocutor. “Now it’s admiration”, remarks the city guard again. The conversation continues in the same terms: “I think the same as you. There are things that are politically very incorrect but I follow, for example, the issue of the Hipercor attack, we are going to share responsibilities. I obviously don’t justify, you can’t put a bomb…”, explained the woman on the other side of the line. “Nowhere, but you can’t put it on and lift it to someone else either,” continues the investigator, in relation to the call that warned of the attack committed by ETA in Barcelona in 1987, where the terrorists placed a car bomb with 30 kilos of ammonal in a shopping center on Avenida Meridiana, causing 21 deaths, all of them civilians, and injuring another 45 people. The three false calls from Troitiño In that attack, ETA member Antón Troitiño -accused of participating in 22 murders and died of illness last year – made three warning calls with confusing information. One went to the Guardia Urbana, the same body to which this agent belongs. Another to the establishment itself and the third to the Avuí newspaper. In them, he warned that the time of the explosion would be 38 minutes before the real one. The police officers, the security of the shopping center itself and members of the Urban Guard searched for the bomb without success (Troitiño never warned that it was inside a vehicle) and the shopping center was not evicted, contrary to what now mark the protocols. As was proven in the trial, it was common for the establishment to receive terrorist threats on those dates. That day, Troitiño’s was the sixth bomb threat the mall had received since it opened that morning. As the time marked on the call passed, the agents treated the case as a false alarm. However, the device exploded almost 40 minutes later, contrary to the alert communicated by the command and reaping 21 lives in the biggest attack that ETA perpetrated in Barcelona.