TAGGING OR JAIL

The government will soon have to decide if convicted Basque terrorist Iñaki De Juana Chaos is to spend the rest of his last three-year jail sentence under police supervision at home or go back to jail. Doctors at the hospital in San Sebastian where he has been recovering from a hunger strike since March 1st say he is now well enough to leave. The government incensed ETA victims when it said it would allow De Juan to go home for "humanitarian reasons", after serving only 17 years for the murder of 25 people when he was leader of ETA's Madrid commando group in the mid-80s. De Juana has said he will not wear an electronic tag if he is allowed home.

BASQUE FORM PARALLEL SOCIALIST PARTY

While the politicians were out on the hustings last week, a group of Basque intellectuals announced they intended to form a new party - the Basque Socialist Party - to counteract the Socialist government's policy of holding peace talks with the Basque terrorist group ETA, which many Basques do not agree with. The founders include two well known Basque philosophers - Carlos Martinez Gorriaran, an active member of the anti-ETA group "Basta Ya (Enough)", and Fernando Savater, a lifelong Socialist. The other founder member is Rosa Díez, the Socialist government's Euro-deputy, who is very critical of her party's attempts to make peace with ETA unless they group lays down its arms first. They said they hoped their parallel socialist party would have a nationwide coverage by the next general election in March 2008.

THOUSANDS MARCH IN SUPPORT OF RETURNING THE JUANAR TO PRISON

Edition 526

About ten thousand people demonstrated in Bilbao last Saturday to protest the Supreme Court's annulment of part of the electoral lists of the Acción Nacionalista Vasca (ANV) party on the grounds that the candidates in fact belonged to the banned Batasuna party, which is the political wing of the Basque terrorist group ETA. Batasuna leader Joseba Permach said the legal decision against the ANV was nothing more than an election putsch by the ruling Socialist Party and the Basque National Party (PNV) "to keep their seats". Fearing that ETA would react violently to the ANV annulments, PNV president Josu Jon Imaz has presented an anti-terrorist pact proposal to all the political parties, but especially to Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and opposition leader Mariano Rajoy. There has been no response so far. Meanwhile, in Madrid and several other cities, thousands of people marched to support a demand for convicted ETA terrorist Iñaki De Juan Chaos to be returned to jail to serve out the rest of his sentence. He is currently recovering from a long hunger strike in a hospital in San Sebastian and has been photographed outside the hospital with his girlfriend on several occasions. From there he will be sent home to finish his sentence under house arrest. De Juana led the ETA commando group in Madrid in the mid-1980s that killed 25 people, including 12 Guardia Civil who died in a car bomb attack, and wounded at least 60 others.

ETA ASSASINATION LIST

Edition 526

According to a police report leaked by the La Razon newspaper last week, the so-called "Donosti" ETA commando group which was dismantled by the Guardia Civil earlier this year had a list of more than 400 possible "objectives", that is, people to be assassinated. The Duchess of Alba was on the list. She owns a palace in San Sebastian and has appeared on several ETA assassination lists in the past. The president of the Constuitutional Tribunal, María Emilia Casas is on the list. She was one of several judges who decided last week to ban candidates of the Basque Nationalist Action (ANV) party because of links with ETA's political wing, the banned Batasuna party. Nastional Court judge Fernasndo Grande-Merluska who has sent several ETA prisoners to jail is also on the list. The newspaper said many businessmen who had featured prominently in the headlines in recent months were on the list, as well as some journalists, sports personalities and members of the country's security forces.

NINE ARRESTED ON SUSPICION OF WORKING WITH ETA

Edition: 332

Spain’s Interior Minister Angel Acebes announced on Saturday that six Spaniards and three Mexicans suspected of collaborating with the Basque separatist group ETA have been arrested in Mexico, in an operation carried out jointly by Mexican and Spanish police. Mr. Acebes said another person had been detained in the Basque region of northern Spain. Most of those detained had fled from Europe after being involved in ETA’s decades-long bombing and assassination campaign. Mr. Acebes said that several of those arrested had been channelling funds to and from ETA and had also helped exiled members of the group to hide their identity. He also revealed that accounts worth 900,000 Mexican pesos (about £60,000) had been frozen as part of the year-long investigation. ETA is accused of killing more than 800 people in its long campaign for an independent Basque homeland, and has been blacklisted by both the European Union and the United States as a terrorist organisation.

LIMPET BOMB UNDER VAN KILLED TWO OFFICERS

Edition: 325

The Basque separatist terrorist group ETA struck in Navarra on Friday, killing two police officers and injuring one of their colleagues and a passer-by. The terrorists obviously knew that once a month police officers visit the Casa de Cultura in the small village of Sangüesa, to enable local residents to obtain or renew their identity cards, and they planted a limpet bomb beneath the officers’ van while it was parked in a square in the village centre. The device detonated when two of the policemen were in the van, preparing to return to base, and the third was about to get in. The force of the explosion blasted the vehicle 15 metres off the ground, and experts believe the bomb contained between five and six kilos of explosives. The two men who died were Bonifacio Martín, aged 56, who was from Ávila, and Julián Envit, 53, from Sabiñánigo. They were both married, and both had two children. Their colleague, who suffered serious multiple injuries, is aged 44. A passer-by was slightly hurt when the bomb blew up, and several people also needed medical assistance for minor cuts and for nervous attacks. This latest attack by ETA occurred only a few days after the municipal and regional elections, in which Batasuna, which is believed to be linked to the terrorist group, was banned from taking part because it has been declared illegal. It is the first time the terrorists have carried out an attack in Sangüesa, where none of the village’s councillors have until now felt the need for bodyguards, unlike their counterparts in other areas in the north of Navarra, and in Pamplona.

LETTER BOMB INJURES SEVEN

Edition: 324
Date: 26-05-03

A letter bomb exploded at a post office in Valencia on Saturday, injuring seven employees. The most seriously hurt was a postman who was standing in for a colleague, and who triggered the explosion when he moved a plastic box in which the envelope had been placed among other mail. The 51 year old suffered injuries to his eyes, ear and one hand, and had to undergo six-hour emergency surgery to save his sight. The other employees who were hurt were treated at hospital and then allowed to go home. The authorities have denied rumours that the letter bomb was the work of the Basque separatist terrorist party ETA, as the device was “home-made”, and contained only a small amount of explosive. They think it more likely that “extremist and radical groups” were responsible, and the Governmental delegate believes an anarchist group could be to blame.

BANNED PROTEST MARCH GOEAS AHEAD

Editon: 322
Date: 12-05-03

About 20,000 people took part in a street march in Bilbao on Saturday, despite the fact that the demonstration had been banned by the Basque regional government the day before. The march was organised by members of the political group Euskal Herritarrok, (EH) in support of Udalbiltza Kursaal, an electoral association which has been banned by judge Baltasar Garzón because he believes it is linked with the Basque separatist terrorist organisation ETA. The rally was also to protest against the detention of several members of the banned political group Batasuna, and the cancellation of electoral lists for more than 1,000 Basque political candidates for the municipal elections which are to be held on 25th May. The demonstrators marched in silence, many of them carrying banners with slogans such as “Yes to Udalbitza, yes to the Basque Country”, and the event passed off without incident.

FRENCH POLICE DEAL MAJOR BLOW TO ETA

Edition: 322
Date: 12-05-03

Police in France have dealt what has been described as a major blow to the Basque separatist terrorist group ETA, by arresting four people who are believed to be members of the organisation. One of those captured is a woman who is alleged to be a leader of ETA’s military wing and the head of one of the terrorist group’s operative commands. She is the girlfriend of another suspected ETA member who was arrested in December but who escaped a few hours later from the police station in Bayona, and at first the authorities believed she had been detained as part of the same police operation but it was subsequently discovered that they had arrested another woman instead. She is thought to have been responsible for the murder of a Basque police officer in April 2001, and two others in November the same year, and of placing a bomb at a cemetery in Zarautz (Guipúzcoa) in January 2000 which was primed to explode at a Partido Popular commemoration service for a councillor who was assassinated by ETA in 1998. Friday night’s arrests were made in the town of Saintes, in south-west France, while the four suspected terrorists were travelling in two cars through the town centre. Three of them were armed, and they were all carrying false identification. The authorities had been watching them for some time and decided to make a move when it appeared that the group were planning to leave the area.

ETA PRISONERS NO LONGER ABLE TO ATTEND UNIVERSITY

Edition: 321
Date: 05-05-03

The government has decided that prisoners who are members of the Basque separatist terrorist group ETA will no longer be able to study at the University of the Basque Country, Universidad del Pais Vasco. The modification to the law is a result of a meeting last Autumn between Prime Minister José María Aznar and a group of university professors from the Basque Country, at which they complained that ETA prisoners who were studying with the UPV were being given higher than normal marks and enjoyed more frequent visits from lecturers than other prisoners. After investigating the claims, the government decided that in future ETA prisoners will no longer be able to enjoy such privileges and will have to study via the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED).