Arnaldo Otegi

Arnaldo Otegi Mondragón (born 6 July 1958) is a Basque politician, who, in February 2013, was elected as Secretary General of abertzale Basque separatist party Sortu. He has been a member of the Basque Parliament for both Herri Batasuna and Euskal Herritarrok. These two parties and Batasuna were banned in 2003 for having links to Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) which is proscribed as a terrorist group. He was one of the key negotiators during the last unsuccessful peace talks in Loiola and Geneva, in 2006.Before joining politics he had been convicted of being an ETA member and taking part in several actions, amongst which was the kidnapping of the Basque entrepreneur Luis Abaitúa. In the 1990s he started his political career and quickly gained prominence within the Basque separatism movement, becoming the leader of Herri Batasuna in 1997 after its whole National Committee was arrested. However the party was declared illegal in 2003 due to its relationship with ETA. In June 2007 he was convicted of praising terrorism, imprisoned, and then released from prison in August the following year. In October 2009 he was arrested for attempting to put Batasuna back together, and was given a ten-year sentence. In May 2012 his sentence was reduced to 6½ years by the Supreme Court of Spain as they found enough evidence to prove his membership, but not his leadership of the terrorist organization. He was chosen as candidate to Lendakari by EH Bildu for the Basque parliamentary election of 2016 but the electoral committee invalidated its candidacy due to his penal disqualification.

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