The National Court acquitted him and the Supreme Court annulled the decision. The same court rewrote the sentence and acquitted him again, but the Supreme Court annulled it again, this time ordering three different magistrates to repeat the trial.
ETA member Asier Eceiza was facing this second trial this Tuesday and has chosen to avoid it, recognizing the facts attributed to him by the prosecutor Miguel Ángel Carballo with a touch-up somewhat lowering the penalties. He will be sentenced to 182 years in prison compared to the 268 years requested in the initial indictment for two crimes of havoc and 14 attempted murders. The accusation refers to the attacks on hotels in Alicante y Benidorm in the summer of 2003.
In practice, neither this reduction in sentence nor the sentence itself will have hardly any practical impact for the accused. The prosecutor recalled that according to the rules of the Penal Code, the maximum limit of effective compliance is 20 years.
Furthermore, Eceiza was already considered guilty in the attack against the socialist councilor Juan Priede. Also then he conformed and accepted the facts in exchange for lowering the initial request of 28 years in prison to 19 years.
In the first acquittal ruling, the Court considered it proven that Eceiza had rented the rooms used by ETA, but not its direct participation in the attacks. The Supreme Court’s response was that “any prior activity that objectively facilitates criminal action, if carried out with the purpose of contributing to the desired result, is likely to merit the criminal reproach that the code assigns to those who collaborate in any way -necessary or not.” – with criminal activity”.