A report by the Human Rights Observatory links state apparatus to the disappearance of Pertur

Half a century after the disappearance of Eduardo Moreno Bergaretxe Pertur, a study carried out by the Observatory for Human Rights has concluded that the strongest hypothesis to explain what happened on 23 July 1976 is that it was an operation carried out by the police or para-police apparatus of the State, for which they would be assisted by someone from the political environment of Pertur, according to the report.

The 40-page report has reviewed the documentation accumulated for decades, collected new testimonies and reinterpreted this well-known case of the Transition.

1979 and dirty war

The report notes how for years the internal cleansing hypothesis has been so powerful that the murder of Pertur was a revenge for internal issues within the political-military ETA. However, according tothe authors of the report, according to available evidence, it would be more consistent to believe that it was a contextual act of "dirty war" against Basque militants and refugees.

The investigation contextualizesthe disappearance of Pertur in the context of active para-police activity in 1976, a year in which there were numerous attacks, threats and attempted kidnappings against leaders of the abertzale left.

The report also stresses that Pertur himself and his family were targeted by threats, attacks on housing and public signalling campaigns, especially in the months leading up to his disappearance.

Pertur's trusted environment

One of the main arguments of the investigation is that the situation of clandestinity in which Pertur lived made it very difficult to find him without information from a trusted environment. According to the report, his appointment in Behobia on 23 July 1976 could only be known from within the organization, so the authors believe that there was an internal collaboration or leak that facilitated his location.

However, the report rules out that this means that members of the political-military ETA were the material perpetrators of the kidnapping and disappearance.

On the other hand, it calls into question some of the interpretations that have been entrenched for decades, such as Pertur's thesis that political disagreements over the future of ETA justified internal murder. According to the authors, the Ochagavian Paper written by Pertur did not propose to abandon the armed struggle, but rather to reorganize the political-military structure of the organization, so they believe that this argument was later used to reinforce an unfounded hypothesis.

Italian track

The report also recovers the so-called "Italian track", which was investigated by the Italian judiciary in the 1980s and then dealt with by the documentary The Year of All Demons by Angel Amigo, a line of investigation involving an Italian neo-fascist group in clandestine operations against ETA militants in southern France on behalf of or supported by Spanish security service sectors.

Thus, the investigation concludes that Pertur's disappearance was the result of two dynamics: on the one hand, a complaint or leak of information from his political environment, and, on the other, the intervention of para-police structures linked to the State. However, he acknowledges that until new evidence emerges or the details of his remains are clarified, the final identification of those responsible for what happened will be pending.