DETAINED PRIESTS

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32118, 14 October 1969, Page 17

DETAINED PRIESTS

Twenty He\l In Spain (N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—CopyrigM) BILBAO (Spain), Oct. 13. Twenty Basque priests are being held in prison for involvement in nationalist movements or other activities against the Franco regime, according to informed sources in Bilbao. The priests, either serving sentences or awaiting trials, are detained in a special wing—called “the priests’ penitential residence”—at Zamora Prison, in a remote part of the Castilian highlands not far from the Portuguese border. Eight of the priests have already been tried by military courts. They include five priests sentenced last June to prison terms of 10 and 12 years for issuing a manifesto, during a four-day hunger strike, denouncing alleged torture by the police in a swoop on nationalist extremists campaigning for a separate Basque state. About 25 Roman Catholics last night began their seventh protest sit-in in a church in the Catalan textile town of Tarrasa.

The group has arranged a 24-hour sit-in every week-end for the last two months in a San Cristobal church in protest against the appointment of a conservative clergyman as the new parish priest.