The son of Manuel Giménez Abad, the president of the PP of Aragón assassinated by ETA in 2001, has appeared this Tuesday at the National Court to ratify the recognition of Mikel Karrera Sarobe, Ata, as the man who shot on the afternoon of May 6 against his father.

“We crossed our eyes and we saw each other’s faces perfectly,” he declared in the trial against Ata and his supposed commando partner, Miren Itxaso Zaldua, Sahatsa. Borja Giménez has remembered that Sunday afternoon. “My father and I used to go to soccer. We left the house to get to La Romareda on time. When we had been walking for five minutes, a man came up from behind and shot my father. He shot him twice. My father fell to the ground and He finished him off with another shot.”

That day they showed him many photographs of ETA members, but he did not recognize any of them. Nor in those that in the following years the Security Forces continued to show him. Until 2014, when the Civil Guard asked him to go to Madrid to take a look at another batch of images. So he did: “I recognize the person who shot my father, a person with long and somewhat curly hair. Later, through the press, I learned that it was Karrera Sarobe.”

For an eventual conviction, as important as recognizing it is that he did it without ever having seen the image of Ata before, who had been arrested in 2010. “Not at all, that is the reality,” he stated when asked by the defense that he they doubted.

Four years later there was a face-to-face recognition wheel in Paris. By then he did know that Ata was the main suspect and had seen more photos of him in the media. But, as he has declared today, his recognition was clear: “I recognized him perfectly by his characteristic features: his gaze and his jaw.”

The son’s testimony is a key piece to eliminate the murder of the popular leader from the long list of unsolved murders. Among those who have heard Borja Giménez’s statement has been the current president of the PP of Aragón, Jorge Azcón.

A while before another protected witness had already appeared who also identified Ata emphatically. “It was him,” the woman declared, recalling the moment the police showed her a list of photographs.

She explained to the prosecutor that that afternoon she had just left her husband on the way to La Romareda. She noticed a young boy, dressed in dark, who looked at her. “I thought, ‘what a handsome boy.'” The police took her statement and showed her pictures of her when she called them the next day to say that she thought she had seen a suspect. But at that time the Security Forces had not identified Ata and his photograph was not on the list. Eighteen years later, yes, and she recognized it.

A third protected witness who has appeared came to run after the man who had shot, supposedly Ata, without being able to reach him. But before that he had “crossed his gaze” with the woman to whom after the shots the man gave “something, I don’t know if the weapon.” When the case was revived, he identified Sahatsa in mugshots. He described her from the beginning as a strong woman, with “chubby cheeks”, while the defense has insisted at trial that the defendant has always been a thin woman.

After Sahatsa’s defense questioned the consistency of his identification, the president of the court, magistrate Francisco Vieira, intervened. “When he made the identification, were you sure or doubtful?” “Perfectly, perfectly. There are situations in life that are indelible. Unfortunately, this is one of them.”

The Prosecutor’s Office asks for Ata and Sahatsa 30 years in prison for the murder. Karrera Sarobe is already serving a life sentence in France for three murders, but Miren Itxaso was free when she was arrested again in 2001 for this attack. She has been in pretrial detention ever since.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project