3 suspected Basque militants detained in France
PARIS — Police detained three suspected members of Basque separatist group ETA in a French Alps ski resort and seized material for making explosives, officials said, after a series of bombings claimed by the group on the Spanish island of Mallorca.
The men were detained in Corbier-Villarembert in an operation led by French anti-terrorist agents and police, with help from Spanish authorities, a French official said on condition of anonymity because of police policy. The men had weapons and false identity papers, he said.
Spanish Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba added that during the detentions, French police found about 20 explosive devices and 42 detonators.
An additional stash of material used to make explosives was discovered Wednesday in southern France following the arrests, Rubalcaba said. Police found about 220 pounds (100 kilograms) of such material near the French Pyrenees town of Ferrieres, 25 miles (40 kilometers) from the Spanish border.
Rubalcaba said police hope that searches in the next few days will turn up more material. He said the leader of the three detained Wednesday was Aitzol Etxaburu, who Spanish authorities said had ties with Mikel de Garikoitz Aspiazu, alias Txeroki, a suspected ETA chief arrested in November in France.
The minister said the three are believed to have been involved in organizing logistics for ETA, distributing weapons and explosives. The other two detained were identified as Andoni Sarasola and Alberto Machain.
“ETA has just one destiny, which is jail and it’s a destiny they will reach shortly,” Rubalcaba told reporters.
“ETA will try (to attack) again. It’s a certainty we have to work with,” he said. “The security forces will work to try to ensure they don’t succeed and that’s the way it will go on until this ends and we finish with all the terrorists.”
The Spanish minister said it was too early to say if the group had supplied any of the explosives used in ETA’s recent attacks, which included bombings in the city of Burgos and on the island of Mallorca that killed two police officers and injured scores of people at the end of July.
ETA also carried out a string of small blasts in Mallorca on Aug. 2 aimed at striking fear among tourists at the height of the summer’s holiday season.
ETA has killed more than 825 people since 1968 when it started a violent campaign for an independent Basque state in parts of northeastern Spain and southwestern France.
In a separate incident Wednesday, police discovered and defused an explosive device in a real estate agency in the French Basque town of Bassussary. A police official said the facade of the agency was scrawled with a graffiti in Basque language reading “Basque Country is not for sale.”
Associated Press reporter Ciaran Giles in Madrid contributed to this report.
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