Dismantled ETA unit was preparing large attack: official
24/7/2008 17:23
The dismantled "Vizcaya Command" of the Basque Separatist Goup (ETA) was
preparing a large attack in the Basque region "very soon," the Interior Ministry
of Spain said yesterday.
Details of the attempt, which would not "be
immediate," were discovered Tuesday in a document found in the house of a
detainee, an Interior Ministry spokesman said.
Spanish police Tuesday
detained nine suspected members of ETA including Arkaitz Goikoetxea, the alleged
cell leader in the northern Basque region. Most of the detainees are between 23
and 25 years old.
Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said the capture
of the group was "excellent," since "it was the most active, most dynamic and of
course the most wanted one."
Perez said the command was a "complex"
coordinated by a "released" non convicted man and hired by ETA who acted as
"dynamizer" of a group formed by non convicted "legal" members.
The unit was
accused of having links with most of the terrorist attacks staged by the ETA
since it ended a 14-month truce in June 2007.
It was held responsible for a
car bomb explosion in a civil guard barracks leaving one serviceman dead in May
and four small bombs in Cantabria Sunday, according to the police.
ETA, short
for Euskadi Ta Askadeguotasuna or Basque Homeland and Freedom, was established
in 1959. It's listed as an armed terrorist group by the European Union and
United States.
Xinhua
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