The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled on Thursday that France must compensate a former military chief of the ETA terrorist group €10,000 for failing to provide sufficient medical care while he was in custody.
Juan Ibon Fernández Iradi (main archive image), a Spanish citizen serving a 30-year sentence for the shooting of a gendarme, has lived with multiple sclerosis since it was diagnosed in 2011.
According to his legal team, the authorities offered care that was delayed and insufficient following the diagnosis, particularly regarding psychological support, specialist appointments, physiotherapy and other necessary treatments.
Now 54 years old, Fernández Iradi had requested €100,000 in compensation, but judges in Strasbourg granted him €10,000, along with €11,840 to cover legal costs.
He was initially arrested in 2002, a year after a French gendarme was injured during a routine traffic stop.
Between 2008 and 2009, courts in France handed him three separate prison terms – 30, 15 and 30 years – on terrorism-related charges. In 2012, these were combined and reduced to the legal ceiling of 30 years. He is currently held in San Sebastian, in Spain’s Basque Country.
The terrorist group ETA, which campaigned for independence for the Basque region spanning Spain and France, was held responsible for more than 850 deaths during its decades of armed activity from 1959 until it disbanded in 2018.
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