This medium has been able to learn about some of the most relevant findings found by the National Police on February 10 at the main headquarters of Sidenor, in Basauri, within the framework of the judicial investigation opened in the National Court against three directors for alleged crimes of smuggling and complicity with genocide.
Among the judicial documentation that elDiario.es has accessed is a chain of emails, printed and found in the office of Íñigo Molero, commercial director and one of the three investigated.
A table and the word “howitzers”
This document contains a table with recipients from the arms sector, including the Israeli company IMI Systems LTD, along with the express reference to “howitzers.” Israel Weapon Industries also appears as another recipient.
This chain of messages – the most recent is dated March 5, 2025 – refers to Sidenor’s record of exports destined for the arms sector during 2024, the year in which the Israeli Army killed tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza and blocked the entry of necessary aid into the Strip. The list also includes nine other countries and more than twenty companies in the military field.
The search at the Sidenor headquarters was carried out within the framework of the investigation led by the judge of the National Court Francisco de Jorge Mesas, who took a statement last November from the president of the Spanish steel company, José Antonio Jainaga, and two other directors, for the sale of steel to the arms company Israel Military Industries (IMI), with shipments that this newspaper reported last June.
The ruling of the judge of the National Court states that these sales occurred “with full knowledge” that the buyer is a manufacturer of all types of weapons, both heavy and light, and that “the steel was logically intended for the production of weapons.”
The plaintiff against Sidenor is the Palestinian Community of Catalonia, representing the Campaign to End Arms Trade with Israel. These groups indicate that the findings in the police record show that “Sidenor was fully aware that the steel it exported to Israeli arms companies was destined for the manufacture of howitzers.”
Jorge Mesas points out that the abuses perpetrated in the Gaza Strip are known to everyone, “both because of the information published daily in the press and on television, and because of the provisional classification as a crime attributed to these events by the International Criminal Court and the complaints presented by the UN special rapporteur, Francesca Albanese, and by the UNRWA. [Agencia de las Naciones Unidas para los Refugiados de Palestina]among other people and United Nations agencies.”
The steel supply chain from Sidenor to Israel had been operational for at least several months. For example, in August 2024 it shipped 239 tons of steel, in March 2025 it exported 219 tons and in May of that same year another shipment of 356 tons was recorded. One of the last traced shipments, which this newspaper reported, occurred on June 10, 2025, when the MV VELA ship transported 393 tons of Sidenor steel from Spanish territory with Israel as the recipient.
Once this shipment became known, the UN rapporteur for Palestine, Francesca Albanese, warned that it would stop in Turkey, and asked the Turkish authorities to inspect the ship and prevent “this illegal cargo” from reaching Israel.
Shortly after, elDiario.es reported that another ship, the ZIM LUANDA, was scheduled to leave the port of Barcelona with 122 steel bars from the manufacturer Sidenor Aceros Especiales – with headquarters in the Basque Country, Cantabria and Catalonia – to deliver the cargo on July 11 to the Israeli port of Haifa. These facts were learned through an investigation by the American organization Palestinian Youth Movement.
The Prosecutor’s Office
Two weeks ago the Prosecutor’s Office of the National Court asked to annul the registration of the Sidenor facilities and the genocide case. Given this, the Palestinian Community of Catalonia, the plaintiff group, denounces that the Prosecutor’s Office of the National Court “is blocking, in an arbitrary and obstinate manner, any attempt to clarify the facts and the carrying out of key proceedings.”
Its spokespersons point out that said Prosecutor’s Office “opposed the search at the Sidenor headquarters and then appealed the resolution” and “is trying to prevent a Palestinian who was forced to leave the Gaza Strip with his family and who is currently seeking asylum from appearing in the procedure, as a victim.” Therefore, they request that “the judicial procedure continue without interference and with all the necessary diligence.”
They also ask that Sidenor be excluded from any public contracting and subsidy granting process until its degree of participation is clarified and that the Prosecutor’s Office of the Supreme Court for Human Rights and Democratic Memory “assume the processes in which qualified facts” such as crimes against humanity, war crimes and/or genocide against the Palestinian people are investigated.
Legal obligations
Already in January 2024, the International Court of Justice indicated that there was a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza and in July of that same year it asked UN countries for measures “to prevent trade and investment relations that contribute to the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories”, in reference to the “illegal” Israeli occupation and “segregation”.
The Independent Commission of Inquiry assigned by the United Nations concluded in September 2025 that “Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza since October 2023.” Its members, chaired by Judge Navi Pillay, have explained that, since January 2024, when the International Court of Justice already warned of the risk of genocide, “if not before, States had the legal obligation to act” with measures to prevent, stop and punish Israeli crimes.
The UN rapporteur for Palestine, Francesca Albanese, recalls that States must “impose sanctions and cut ties with Israel, but banks must also stop investing and companies stop profiting from the occupation: you cannot have dealings with States that commit genocide.”
The collective campaign to End Arms Trade with Israel, made up of more than six hundred organizations, insists on asking the Government “for the application of a “comprehensive and retroactive” arms embargo, so that no new purchases or transactions occur through subsidiaries of Israeli companies or so that there are no new authorizations for transactions of military material with Israel, such as those approved by Spain on December 23.
Source: www.eldiario.es
