- A specialized team of the gendarmerie, accompanied by the forensic doctor Paco Etxeberria and ordered by the judge, will try to find the remains of José Miguel Etxeberria Naparra on Tuesday morning. The search will be carried out on a thread near Mont de Marsan (Landes), where a reliable source has ensured that Naparra was buried.
[Update, 04-01-2017]
According to the first information, there has been no net result in the search for the remains of Naparra. In the morning they excavated the first and found nothing, in the afternoon they began the second, but they also found nothing there. The researchers worked for five hours in 300 square meters on a thimble located 2 kilometers from the town of Labrit.
At 9:30 a.m., the earth begins to rise in the oak grove between the towns of Brocas and Labrit. In October last year, an anonymous source linked to state terrorism said that Naparra was buried there in 1980. To these statements has been added a report by Paco Etxeberria that gives credence to the theory of burial. The lawyer of the family, Iñigo Iruin, also considers the testimony of the anonymous source to be true.
José Miguel Etxeberria disappeared in 1980, in Zibu (Lapurdi) and his kidnapping and murder was taken over by Batallón Vasco Español. The judge of the National Audience, Ismael Moreno, closed the case in 2004 because he did not identify the murderers of Naparra.
In 2016, the family and the forensic doctor filed two reports detailing the presence of the remains in this area of the Landes. On the basis of these reports, Judge Moreno reopened the case and asked France to search for Naparra’s body. The crime has not yet been prosecuted because the family filed the complaint in 1999 and, therefore, it has not yet been twenty years.