Majorcan woman to be questioned on ETA connections today

Judge Baltasar Garzon will question Majorcan woman Purificación Ródenas Martínez today in connection with her alleged connections with the armed Basque separatist group ETA's Comando Barcelona. Ródenas, accused of affording shelter for the Comando Barcelona, was arrested in the early hours of Tuesday morning, as she was about to enter her home in Barcelona's Calle Argimón. They also searched her home and confiscated material which may be related to the activities of the commando unit, broken up last week with the arrest of alleged members Fernando Garcia Jodrá, Unai López de Ocáriz and Nereo Bengoa, who have been remanded in custody without bail, along with two of their alleged collaborators, Pedro Alvarez and Laura Riera. One of the suspected ETA members told high-profile High Court judge Baltasar Garzon that he had tried unsuccessfully to kill a well-known radio journalist eight times, court sources said yesterday. The suspect said that he had become obsessed with the idea of killing Luis del Olmo, who hosts one of Spain's most popular morning radio programmes. The suspect is believed to have headed ETA's Barcelona-based command unit and has also been linked to the killings of two local politicians, a policeman and the former Socialist minister Ernest Lluch, the court sources said. In December a police officer was shot dead after surprising two ETA members on their way to kill Del Olmo in Barcelona. Garzon is spearheading investigations after a major police crackdown led to the arrest of more than a dozen suspected ETA members in the Basque Country and the northeastern region of Catalonia. The latest attack linked to ETA was a car bomb explosion at Madrid's Barajas airport on Monday morning, the third attack in a month.