Arnaldo Otegi, Date of Birth, Place of Birth
TweetArnaldo Otegi
Basque pro-independence politician
Date of Birth: 06-Jul-1958
Place of Birth: Elgoibar, Basque Country, Spain
Profession: politician
Nationality: Spain
Zodiac Sign: Cancer 
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About Arnaldo Otegi
- Arnaldo Otegi Mondragón (born 6 July 1958) is a Basque politician from the Basque Autonomous Community in Spain, who is currently General Secretary of Basque nationalist party EH Bildu.
- He was 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 ETA which was proscribed as a terrorist group.
- He was one of the key negotiators during the 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 the alleged leadership of ETA.He was chosen as candidate for the post of Lehendakari by EH Bildu for the Basque parliamentary election of 2016 but the electoral committee invalidated its candidacy due to his penal disqualification.
- Otegi was released from prison on 1 March 2016.
- In November 2018, the European Court of Humans Rights ruled against Spain for the Spanish National Court's breach of the defendant's right to have an impartial trial, for which he had spent 6 years in prison.
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