Asel Luzarraga terrorist? Please!

Asel Luzarraga is a Basque punk who was framed by the state of Chile for terrorism and is now campaigning to clear his name.

In March 2009, Asel arrived in Padre las Casas in Araucania, Chile, and was soon involved in the punk and anarchist underground movement there.

He learned about the state-terrorism that Chile uses against the indigenous Mapuche people, and against the anarchist movement, so he wrote a few articles discussing these issues on his blog.

The Chilean authorities didn’t like this very much, especially the way he wrote in support of Mapuche people from an anarchist point of view so, on 31^st of December, after nine months living there, the Carabineros (Chilean Police) paid him a visit.

They had an order to search his apartment, but never explained to him what they were looking for or what he was supposed to be suspected of. They took their time “searching” for a couple of hours, until he was suddenly taken to the bedroom he shared with partner, Vane, and there the Colonel told him he was under arrest because of what they “found” on top of the wardrobe. When he asked about what it was they’d found, the Colonel told him ‘weapons and explosives’, although without showing him the evidence.

He was arrested for terrorism.

His lawyer told him they wanted to charge him with 4 bomb attacks. When he finally saw, in the prosecutor’s file, for the first time the objects the police had apparently “found” on his wardrobe it was clearly a farce: an old and empty fire extinguisher, some fuses, a lighter and some nuts and screws.

What the Chilean state hadn’t realised, was that back in the Basque Country, Asel was a well know author and they were soon forced to drop the bombing allegations. Two had happened in Santiago in 2008, before he had even arrived in Chile, and a third took place when he was back in the Basque Country, speaking at a Literature Festival in Durango!

The prosecution changed the charges from terrorist bombings to possession of material for making bombs.

In the Basque Country, Chile and Argentina, nobody who knew Asel could imagine him as a terrorist. He was a well known writer of fiction in Basque and Spanish, a gentle-hearted anarchist who preached freedom for the oppressed, and a crazy punk rocker – but not a terrorist who made bombs! So, they formed a solidarity group that included all kinds of people: relatives, friends, writers, musicians, anti-militarists, hackers, anarchists and punks.

Everybody understood he was in jail, not for being a terrorist, but for his ideas and his writings.

The Chilean Intelligence Services also pointed in that direction in the report they used to get permission to examine Asel’s home: they mentioned two of his articles, one speaking about Basque anarchism, and another one about the Mapuche people’s right to fight for their land, and an activity against prisons in which he took part some days before his arrest. They accused him of being an ‘international anarchist leader’ and ‘introducing foreign ideas to young Chilean people’. That was all. And Chilean media repeated all the time that Asel was Basque, punk and anarchist, as if those features automatically turned him into a terrorist.

The legal process was long. But Asel and his lawyer found a picture taken by the police during the search that showed his bedroom at the moment they arrived… there was no bag, no extinguisher, nothing like that on top of the wardrobe. It was obvious that the police had planted the evidence.

They showed it during the trial, but the writing was on the wall from the very beginning. Seven days after he was arrested, the Interior Minister had signed an order to expel Asel from Chile, no presumption of innocence for him.

Expulsion was the main goal of Chilean government, but they needed a guilty verdict to expel him. He was found guilty, but the sentence was strangely short for such as serious charge, only 220 days in jail, a period he had already passed under arrest, so he was free… to leave Chile immediately.

In October 2010 he moved back to his home in the Basque Country, finding his name now on Interpol’s list of convicted terrorists, but he wasn’t ready to accept his fate, so his lawyer, Jaime Madariaga, presented a demand against Chilean state at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

They argued that the verdict was based on prejudices and that Chilean state was responsible of tainting Asel’s public image and honor. It has been a very long process, but in December 2019 the Commission resolved that Asel’s case is admissible and agreed with all the arguments presented by his lawyer.

Now his case enters a new phase, another long, tough and expensive one. His lawyer must prepare a long report with jurisprudence and legal arguments and it will take some years until Commission decides if they demand the Chilean state at Inter-American Court on Human Rights.