MADRID, Spain (AP) -- Spain's top law enforcement official said Thursday he removed a key prosecutor from his job for failing to obey orders in important cases, including one involving al-Qaida suspects due to be released from jail soon because of a backlog in the courts.
Eduardo Fungairino said Wednesday he was stepping down as chief prosecutor at the National Court for personal reasons after holding the post since 1997.
During his 26 years at the court -- which deals with terrorism cases and crimes against the state -- he has waged a dogged fight against the armed Basque separatist group ETA, prosecuting major cases against it.
Opposition conservatives expressed shock and anger over his removal, accusing the Socialist government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero of orchestrating the move because Fungairino did not share its views on dealing with ETA. They said his departure will sap Spain's battle against the separatists.
Three conservative newspaper editorials -- in El Mundo, La Razon and ABC -- and an association of victims of ETA attacks also charged that the government got rid of Fungairino to pave the way for such talks with ETA and a possible peace deal to end the 30-year-old conflict in the Basque region. The government already has offered ETA negotiations if it renounces violence.
But Attorney General Candido Conde-Pumpido said Thursday that he had forced the prosecutor out of his job for repeatedly failing to keep him advised of developments in key cases. He said he had offered Fungairino a transfer to the Supreme Court and the offer was accepted.
"Patience has a limit," Conde-Pumpido said at a news forum with politicians and reporters.
Citing a recent example, Conde-Pumpido said he learned through a newspaper article -- not Fungairino -- that two suspected al-Qaida members convicted of terrorism in a recent trial will be released from jail on Feb. 17 unless the Supreme Court rules on their appeal by then.
This is because under Spanish law, a person who is convicted of a crime and appeals only has to serve half the jail sentence if the appeal is not ruled on before the sentence reaches that halfway point.
Twenty-four people were put on trial in the terrorism case that ended in September and most had been arrested in Spain in November 2001 or January 2002. Eleven of 18 men convicted were sentenced to nine years in prison or less. Three of the 18 were cleared of charges they helped plan the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, but were convicted of lesser charges.
By now, some of those 11 are at or near the halfway point of the jail time they must serve and the severely backlogged Supreme Court has yet to rule on their appeals, meaning Spain has to release them. Two already have been released for this reason.
Because of a similar case in 2002 involving a man considered a key suspect in the 2004 Madrid train bombings, the attorney general instructed prosecutors to give the Supreme Court three months' warning if a terror suspect's release date was approaching.
But Fungairino failed to warn the Supreme Court in the recent case, the attorney general said.
"I tried to find out who was responsible," he said, "and I found out."
Fungairino, 59, is something of a character in Spanish legal circles.
When he appeared in July before a parliamentary commission probing the Madrid bombings in the case, he professed ignorance of key, widely known elements of the investigation -- he was not directly involved in it -- and said he never read newspapers or listened to the radio, in the interest of "mental hygiene."
He said the only thing he watched on television were BBC documentaries.
The newspaper El Pais reported Thursday he also upset the attorney general recently by failing to advise him of a judge's warning that the probe into the Madrid attacks was going so slowly that some suspects might by law have to be released from custody before a trial could be held.
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