France Arrests Basque Terror Leader

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Rubina

From 'New York Times': The French police have arrested a leader of the Basque militant group ETA, the French and Spanish authorities said Monday. The leader, Garikoitz Aspiazu Rubina, also known as Txeroki (Cherokee), was detained in Cauterets, a town in the French Pyrenees near the Spanish border, a spokeswoman for the Spanish Interior Ministry said. A Spanish woman, also believed to be in ETA, was detained with him, said the spokeswoman, who spoke on condition of anonymity under government rules.

Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of Spain, at a televised news conference here, said the arrest was a “definitive operation in the fight against ETA.” He described Mr. Aspiazu as the head of ETA’s operations and said he was suspected in the fatal shooting of two Spanish policemen in the French coastal town of Capbreton last December 1st. Mr. Aspiazu is also believed to have ordered a car bomb attack in a parking lot at Madrid’s Barajas International Airport in December 2006, the Interior Ministry spokeswoman said. That bombing killed two people. “Nobody doubts that his detention will save lives,” Mr. Zapatero said.

Mr. Aspiazu’s arrest is the latest in a series of captures of suspected ETA operatives, and the highest-profile arrest since May, when the French and Spanish police arrested the organization’s top commander, Francisco Javier Lopez Peña, also known as Thierry, in the French city of Bordeaux. ETA, which is considered a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, has killed more than 800 people in what it says is a struggle for an independent Basque homeland.

Mr. Aspiazu was born in 1973, according to Spanish press reports, and ascended to prominence in ETA from the militant Basque youth movement, which is behind spates of street violence and vandalism that plague many Basque towns. His age and apparent standing in ETA would be consistent with what Spanish security officials describe as a military structure increasingly composed of young militants.

The Associated Press quoted a French official as saying that guns, documents and computers had been confiscated from the house where Mr. Aspiazu was arrested. The French Interior Ministry said in a statement that the latest arrests brought the number of ETA suspects detained on French soil this year to 31.