Idoia López Riaño was born in San Sebastián in 1964 and joined ETA in the early 1980s, while still in her teens. By the middle of the decade she belonged to the Madrid command, the unit that carried out the group's most lethal attacks in the capital in 1986. She was arrested in France in 1994, extradited to Spain on May 9, 2001 and sentenced by the Audiencia Nacional. The press called her "La Tigresa". Her sentences are put at more than 2,000 years in total, for 23 murders; one sentence, of 1,572 years, was imposed for the attack of July 14, 1986 in Madrid in which twelve members of the Guardia Civil died. Because Spanish law capped the time a person could actually serve, she was held for about 23 years, and she left prison in the Basque Country on June 13, 2017.
She joined ETA in the early 1980s, while still in her teens.
In a letter written in 2015 she described the decision as "the immense, terrible and painful error that I committed through lack of maturity", and said she felt that error "every time I breathe". Her first actions were boycotts and sabotage aimed at French interests in Spain, before she took part in killings.
Oker, the first unit she is linked to, operated in the San Sebastián area. Three killings in 1984 and 1985 are attributed to its members, her among them; they are attributions, not separate convictions. Oker was dismantled in October 1985 and she crossed into the south of France.
After Oker she joined the Madrid command during the period of the group's greatest activity. The command also included Ignacio de Juana Chaos, Juan Manuel Soares Gamboa, Antonio Troitiño and Inés del Río Prada. She is linked to three attacks in the capital in 1986.
On April 25, 1986 five members of the Guardia Civil were killed in Madrid. On June 17, 1986 Ricardo Sáenz de Ynestrillas and two other military men were killed. Both attacks are attributed to the command in which she served. The third, on July 14, 1986, is the one for which she was sentenced to 1,572 years.
On July 14, 1986, twelve members of the Guardia Civil were killed on the Plaza de la República Dominicana in Madrid. They were young trainees aged 18 to 25. Many more people were injured, passers-by among them.
The twelve dead were Carmelo Bella Álamo, José Calvo Gutiérrez, Miguel Ángel Cornejo Ros, Jesús María Freixes Montes, Jesús Jiménez Jimeno, Andrés José Fernández Pertierra, José Joaquín García Ruiz, Santiago Iglesias Godino, Antonio Lancharro Reyes, Javier Esteban Plaza, Miguel Ángel de la Higuera López and Juan Ignacio Calvo Guerrero.
Seven ETA members were arrested seven months later, in Madrid, among them the two members of the attack team. The trial of the first group was held at the Audiencia Nacional three years after the attack, and the defendants were convicted as perpetrators of the twelve completed murders and of attempted murders.
She left the Madrid command in September 1986 on the organisation's orders; she is also described as expelled for indiscipline. In her 2015 letter she said she was expelled at 22 for refusing to take part in violence, a statement that is her own and is not a finding. She then spent years in Algeria.
In the summer of 1991 she returned to ETA activity as part of the Ekaitz command, led by José Luis Urrusolo Sistiaga. The command is linked to actions in Zaragoza, Tarragona, Barcelona, Alicante, Valencia and Murcia. On July 30, 1991 she and Urrusolo Sistiaga carried out two attacks in Palma; no one was killed and no serious injuries are recorded. She left Ekaitz in December 1991, after several newspapers published her photograph. She was convicted of belonging to the Ekaitz command between 1991 and 1992.
She was arrested in France in 1994, about twelve years after joining ETA and months after her return from Algeria. She served time in French custody until France extradited her to Spain on May 9, 2001. She was held in Spanish prisons from then until 2017. In her own 2015 account she entered prison at 29 and had by then been held in sixteen different prisons.
On July 9, 2003 a three-judge panel of the Audiencia Nacional in Madrid sentenced López Riaño and Santiago Arrospide Sarasola, known as Santi Potros, for the 1986 attack on the Guardia Civil convoy. The total for the two was 3,492 years, with the 12 deaths and 77 people injured as the finding. Under Spanish law the longest time either could actually serve was 30 years. Her share for this attack was 1,572 years.
In 2010 she joined the Vía Nanclares, a route created under the government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero for prisoners who renounced violence, asked their victims for forgiveness and agreed to cooperate with the courts. Prisoners who signed were moved to prisons in the Basque Country, and ETA expelled them. She and another prisoner were moved to a prison in Álava in the summer of 2010 after signing a declaration that they were breaking with the group. In November 2011 the list of ETA prisoners published by the group's prisoners' collective left both of them out, the usual sign of expulsion.
The Spanish government said at the time that the two remained in the first degree of prison regime, the strictest, because of their long and serious records. The authorities described them as "two prisoners convicted of terrorism".
In October 2015 she wrote a ten-page letter to the president of the Audiencia Nacional's criminal chamber, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, asking for leave, which she had been refused while former comrades in the same position had received it. In a further statement she wrote that she assumed "totally and absolutely" her criminal activity within ETA and, in a text sent to the surveillance court, that "the deaths of this command hurt me in the depths of my soul". The same year the central surveillance judge, José Luis Castro, refused her a leave on the ground that she acknowledged only two of the 23 murders.
In January 2015 her lawyer asked the Audiencia Nacional's first criminal section to refer a question to the Court of Justice of the European Union, challenging the Supreme Court's refusal to deduct from her sentence the time served in French prisons. The Supreme Court had first ruled in March 2014 that such time could be counted, then reversed itself ten months later after a law of 2014, and on January 13, 2015 upheld the law by nine votes to six. The law provides that convictions handed down in another EU state before August 15, 2010 are not to be taken into account.
In 2014 the Audiencia Nacional had allowed her to leave custody to obtain a driving licence. In May 2016 the surveillance judge, José Luis Castro, granted a six-day leave, depending on reports from the Interior Ministry's victims' office and the Basque government on whether victims of ETA lived in the place where she wished to stay. In October 2016 the same judge authorised a three-day leave over the objection of the prison's treatment board, relying on a favourable report from the prosecutor. The conditions were that she report daily at the nearest police station and that it be verified that no victims or relatives lived where she would stay. She had by then served three-quarters of her sentence and had good conduct, and the judge noted that she had distanced herself from ETA because she disagreed with its methods.
Her release date had been December 2017. In May 2017 the prison administration moved it forward by almost six months, citing her renunciation of ETA and her conduct. She left a prison in the Basque Country on Tuesday June 13, 2017, after 23 years in custody. She was 52.
The president of the main association of ETA victims criticised the judges in a letter and said that the calculation of her sentence had been accepted without the legal requirements being met. She had been granted eight leaves that she never used, and the 2016 leave was granted after authorities confirmed no relatives of victims lived in the municipality where she would stay.
Spain's Penal Code of 1973 set a maximum effective term of 30 years however many sentences were imposed, and allowed reductions of the term for work in prison. In 2006 the Supreme Court, in the case of the ETA member Henri Parot, ruled that reductions had to be calculated against each sentence in turn rather than against the 30-year total, so that prisoners with many convictions served up to the limit. The doctrine was applied to 77 ETA members. The Constitutional Court upheld it in March 2012.
On October 21, 2013 the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled, in the case of Inés del Río Prada, that applying the doctrine to her had violated two articles of the European Convention on Human Rights. About fifty ETA members were expected to be released in the following months. The 30-year ceiling is what made it possible for a person sentenced to thousands of years, as López Riaño was, to be released after about 23 years in custody; the penal code was later reformed and the ceiling is now 40 years.
Her account of her departure from the Madrid command in 1986, as a punishment for refusing to take part in violence, is her own; other accounts describe an organisational decision or indiscipline. Some accounts describe the 23 murders as convictions and others as killings attributed to her; the one sentence tied to a named attack is the 1,572 years for July 14, 1986.
1964: born in San Sebastián.
1979 to 1982: joins ETA (year disputed).
November 1984 to May 1985: three killings attributed to the Oker group.
October 1985: Oker dismantled; she crosses into France.
April 25, 1986: five members of the Guardia Civil killed in Madrid.
June 17, 1986: Ricardo Sáenz de Ynestrillas and two other military men killed in Madrid.
July 14, 1986: twelve members of the Guardia Civil killed on the Plaza de la República Dominicana.
September 1986: leaves the Madrid command.
Summer 1991: joins the Ekaitz command; July 30, 1991 two attacks in Palma, no deaths; December 1991 leaves the command.
1994: arrested in France.
May 9, 2001: extradited to Spain.
July 9, 2003: Audiencia Nacional announces the sentence for the attack of July 14, 1986.
2010: joins the Vía Nanclares; moved to Álava.
November 2011: omitted from ETA's list of prisoners.
2014: allowed out to obtain a driving licence.
January 2015: asks for a referral to the Court of Justice of the European Union over time served in France.
October 2015: letter to the president of the Audiencia Nacional's criminal chamber.
May and October 2016: leave granted.
June 13, 2017: released, almost six months before the December date.