The leader of the armed Basque separatist group ETA was caught on Sunday in northern France, the Spanish government said, in the latest blow to a group weakened by 32 arrests in just two months. Ibon Gogeascoechea, wanted for trying to kill Spain’s King Juan Carlos in 1997, was caught along with two other senior ETA rebels in a joint Spanish-French dawn raid near the small town of Cahan in Normandy, the Spanish and French officials said.
Gogeascoechea was the fifth top ETA figure to be caught since 2008 and his arrest was just one of a wave of detentions this year, which has also seen the seizure of two tonnes of explosives, Spanish Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said.
“I would say these have been the worst two months in ETA’s history,” Rubalcaba told a news conference, adding that he thought the two men caught with Gogeascoechea were receiving their last orders before going on a mission to Spain. “This was a commando group about to enter Spain with the worst intentions.”
PHOTO: AFP
The government believes ETA, which has killed more than 850 people, but whose last fatal attack was the killing of two police officers on the island of Majorca in July, has been severely weakened by hundreds of arrests in recent years.
Much of the improvement in police action has been because of cooperation with France and Portugal, which rebels have used as hideouts.
A leading member of ETA’s political wing, Batasuna, last week called for an end to the armed struggle. A faction of Batasuna now wants to launch a legal political party to peacefully pursue the aim of independence for the Basque Country from Spain.
Batasuna, however, has lost influence over the rebels since the collapse of a peace talks with the Spanish government following a bomb attack on Madrid airport in 2006 that ended a ceasefire and killed two people.
The 54-year-old Gogeascoechea and the other two men were stopped in a car stolen in January, a French police source said, adding that pistols and explosives materials were taken from the three men. One of Gogeascoechea’s companions is suspected of being a key member of ETA’s explosives transportation network, the source said.
Gogeascoechea has been personally linked to attacks including the 2008 assassination of Isaias Carrasco, a small-town Socialist Party politician, Rubalcaba said.
“He has been responsible for a good part of the most atrocious attacks since the end of the ceasefire,” said Rubalcaba, who cautioned that even a weakened ETA would be capable of carrying out attacks.
At one stage, perhaps 15 percent of Basques sympathized with the struggle for independence for their mountainous homeland, which also traditionally includes part of southwestern France.
However, support for violence seems to be ebbing in the Basque Country, which already enjoys considerable political autonomy from Madrid.
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