AN HISTORIC member of one of ETA's most bloodthirsty cells, the Madrid Commando, has won her battle for prison leave after 18 months of court cases.
Idoia López Riaño, alias La Tigresa ('The She-Tiger'), was recently given leave to renew her driving licence, but has been pushing for one three-day leave and five others of six days, which she has been constantly denied.
Riaño, sentenced to over 2,000 years in jail for 23 deaths in attacks during ETA's most active years, was initially denied leave because judge José Luis de Castro considered she had not owned up to all the offences she committed as part of the Commando.
Eventually, after a series of letters she sent to the court detailing her heartfelt repentance and her rejection of ETA, admitting the attacks she took part in and referring to those she 'could not prevent, even though she tried', the prison leave permits were agreed to.
But La Tigresa was still unable to take them up, because she would not be allowed to spend her days of liberty in any area where victims of her attacks – survivors, or close family members of the deceased – resided.
She was not prepared to spend her prison leave in any other town besides her native municipality.
López Riaño filed a complaint about the delays as the court checked whether any victims lived in her area, but this appeal was thrown out by the judge.
Now, however, after studying the list of victims, the court is satisfied that none of them live in Riaño's town and have agreed to her taking her periods of leave.
She is not allowed to take them consecutively, though, as this would give her nearly a month and a half free from jail.
La Tigresa is one of the last ETA members to sign up to the so-called Nanclares Route, devised by the last socialist government under José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.
It involved allowing prison leave and other lenient measures in an attempt to re-integrate terrorists back into the community ahead of their eventual release – in exchange, the terrorists were required to openly ask forgiveness of their victims, declare that they rejected violence and break away from ETA, and accept their responsibility for paying compensation to survivors and to next of kin of the deceased awarded by the court at the time of their sentencing.
Only around 20 ETA prisoners – Joseba Urrusolo Sistiaga and Carmen Guisasola being the most prominent – went down this route and even met up with their surviving victims face to face.
But the Nanclares Route was abolished by the PP government under Mariano Rajoy when it gained power from Zapatero and the socialists.
López Riaño's custodial term will end on December 8, 2017, since the maximum time a criminal can spend in prison in Spain is 30 years, even when exemplary sentences run into hundreds or thousands of years.
She was 20 when she committed the atrocities which led to her being jailed a year later in 1987.
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