07/04/2013 00:00
TW
0

THE arrest in France of three ETA leaders has thrown the Basque separatist guerrilla group's leadership into disarray, Spain said yesterday.
Felix Alberto Lopez de la Calle, alias Mobutu and believed to be ETA's military mastermind, was arrested in southwestern France on Friday together with Maria Mercedes Chivite Berango, also suspected of a senior role in the group. Felix Ignacio Esparza Luri, accused of being ETA's top logistics organiser, was also arrested in France on Friday and police seized an ETA explosives cache in a separate raid. “Yesterday ETA suffered one of the hardest blows of recent times because of the importance of the three members of its leadership who have been detained,” Interior Minister Angel Acebes told a news conference. An Interior Ministry statement said ETA's “logistical and operative leadership” had been dismantled.
Acebes said French police had found two limpet bombs and two backpacks containing explosive devices, all ready for use, in an apartment in Bagneres de Bigorre, in the French Pyrenees late on Friday. ETA members had used the apartment to prepare attacks and had only recently abandoned it, he said. “The fact that they had explosive devices ready, that they had limpet bombs ready, reveals the intentions of the terrorist organisation ETA,” Acebes said. ETA, listed as a terrorist group by the United States and European Union, has killed close to 850 people since 1968 in its fight for an independent Basque homeland carved out of northern Spain and southwestern France. Police have arrested some 650 suspected ETA members or collaborators since 2000, mostly in Spain and France. The number of ETA killings has fallen from 23 in 2000 to three last year. Acebes said Esparza Luri was accused of seven murders, Lopez de la Calle of six, and Chivite Berango of three. All three were armed when they were arrested, and police had also seized false documents, stolen cars and documents about ETA during the operation, jointly organised by French and Spanish police and intelligence. The outgoing Spanish government initially blamed ETA for the March 11 Madrid commuter rail attacks which killed 191 people, although the evidence later pointed to radical Islamic groups. The ruling Popular Party's handling of information on the March 11 attacks was seen as an important factor in the Socialists' upset victory in an election held three days after the attacks. The Socialists take office later this month.