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.
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