It was a display case with mahogany legs. Inside, locked, the weapons of a criminal era were exhibited. From the lead years of ETA. One murder every four days in the early 1980s. The table drew attention to those present when the court examined the so-called pieces of evidence during the oral hearing. Behind her, in a glass cabin, sat the arrested terrorists. They belonged to the Motrico, Donibane, Pepe Barrios or Andalusia commandos. Especially active and particularly bloody ‘Taldes’.
The officials of the National Court placed the display case in front of the podium as one more element of the prosecution. Over the years, starting in the 2000s, the evidentiary sample of rifles, submachine guns, shotguns, revolvers or pistols used by criminals ended up being replaced by ballistics expert reports. The table of terror passed away, but another problem loomed with the huge accumulation of this arms depot in the old seat of the court.
The senior police officer of the National High Court had been in office for just a year after a brilliant career in other sensitive tasks. He was very interested in trials of terrorism. He came as an audience and he was also captivated by the exhibition in the aforementioned showcase. One day, in one more hearing against an ETA commando, he innocently asked a colleague from the Judiciary what was the destination of the weapons. “I imagine the Civil Guard will take them, right?” He asked. “No, no, boss, we have them here,” replied the agent. “Here, where!” He exclaimed. “In a room on the sixth floor,” he told her. “Well, let’s go up now,” he settled.
The room raised no suspicions except that the door had “a good armored lock.” Opposite was the office of Judge Alfonso Guevara. “When I opened it, my eggs fell to the ground,” this policeman graphically recalls. Pistols stacked, revolvers, rifles, grenades, hundreds, what do I mean, thousands of cartridges. Gun pens, fuze bombs, artifact delay device. Come on, a real arsenal ”, he describes as if he were watching it again.
Many of these weapons came from the time of the transition from the Public Order Court to the National Court, in the late 1970s. Each was referenced with a procedure number. But the explanation for this dangerous lack of control in that 15-square-meter room was merely practical: that the courts and tribunals had at hand the pieces of conviction for their summaries. So for about 30 years.
Meticulous work
The first decision of the police chief was to commission his subordinates to photograph the weapons. One by one until the more than 1,800 deposited in the room. Then classify them by type, brand, caliber and, lastly, check the judicial references they carried: serial number and assigned criminal procedure. A meticulous task without altering the chain of custody, which forced the arsenal to be distributed among various court units, with special care in handling the cartridges. “When we concluded, the Scientific Police was notified, which made an examination of the classified material with judicial authorization,” says the senior police officer.
This unit was left with 424 weapons due to their alleged links with other open or unsolved terrorism cases (it is estimated that between 150 and 300). They were from the period between 1977 and 2005. And the rest, once the completion of their judicial journey was verified, they were transferred in two Civil Guard vans to the Center for the Intervention of Weapons and Explosives in Madrid. The procedure was authorized by the presidency of the Criminal Chamber, with today’s Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska at the helm, and a copy was sent to each judicial body in case they had to consult the list at some point.
The arsenal has remained eight and a half years in these offices of the Civil Guard. But in September 2016 the Government Chamber of the National Court authorized its destruction and / or scrapping. In all, 1,402 weapons from a dozen terrorist commandos, at least.
The symbolic act last Thursday at the Valdemoro Civil Guard College was the end point of this arsenal (90% belonged to ETA and the rest to the Grapo). A steamroller passed over the material deposited for years in a room of the Court. And his last destination was a foundry.
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