French police arrest two ETA suspects
Tue Jan 9, 2007 7:07am EST
By Jane Barrett
MADRID, Jan 9 (Reuters) - Police arrested two suspected ETA members in southern France on Tuesday, the Spanish Interior Ministry said, 10 days after the Basque separatist group
killed two people by blowing up a car park at Madrid airport.
They were the first arrests since the bombing, in which ETA killed for the first time since May 2003, shattered a nine-month ceasefire and ended a peace process in the Basque Country. It was not clear if the arrested were linked to the airport attack.
It said one of the people arrested, named as Asier Larrinaga Rodriguez, had been
connected to hoards of explosives that police have found in the Basque Country in the last few weeks. The other person had not yet been identified.
A week before the airport bomb, Spanish police found an arms cache in the Basque Country. Last week they found
180 kg of explosives stashed nearby, including parts that could be used for limpet bombs, which ETA has typically used to blow up cars.
The finds have worried Spain that ETA could be ready to launch a new wave of violence in its four-decade-old fight for independence for the Basque Country, an area that stretches across the Spanish-French border.
ETA declared a "permanent truce" last March...
...
Political party Batasuna, banned for its links to ETA and seen as its political wing, has distanced itself from the Madrid attack and called on ETA to resume its truce.
Madrid demands that Batasuna take the step of condemning ETA's violence before the group can be re-legalised and take part in elections. Polls show about one in seven Basques support Batasuna, which also wants self-determination for the area.
"There will never again be a credible truce with ETA," Rubalcaba was quoted as saying. "They have a different logic, a murderous, psychopathic logic."
© Reuters 2007.
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