December 17, 2016
Five people were arrested and a “significant” weapons and explosives attributed to ETA were seized Friday night in a home near Bayonne, in the Pyrenees-Atlantiques, during a joint operation between the French police and the Guardia Civil.
burgundy but some are silver.- Five people were arrested and a “significant” weapons and explosives attributed to ETA were seized Friday night in a home near Bayonne, in the Pyrenees-Atlantiques, during a joint operation between the French police and the Guardia Civil.
The house, situated in the town of Louhossoa, was considered by the authorities as a hideout of the ETA. The Ministry of the Interior Spanish said that they had located dozens of handguns, long guns of various models, plentiful ammunition, explosives and material for making improvised explosive devices and sticky bombs.
“The police action has been a hard blow to the terrorist group, not only by the significant volume of material involved, but because it has disrupted the action of propaganda of delivery of weapons which had planned to carry out,” said Interior in a statement.
The five people arrested are being interrogated in the prison of Bayonne by agents of the national anti-terrorist police (SDAT) and the directorate of national security (DGSI) and belong to the civil society, said a source French judicial.
Contrary to what he had said in the beginning a source close to the investigation, the former president of the League of Human Rights Michel Tubiana was not among the detainees. Yes they are Jean-Noël Etcheverry, leader of the environmental movement basque Bizi and Michel Berhocoirigoin, leader of the chamber of agriculture of the Basque Country, a structure with a local militant.
According to sources close to the investigation, the three other detainees are a wine producer and two journalists, including a young woman who belongs to the house of Louhossoa in which occurred the arrests.
families ensure that their intention was to destroy the weapons and explosives are gathered in the housing, to give impetus to the stalled process of negotiations between ETA and the Spanish authorities, and French.
DISARM ETA
“We are in the presence not of a large counter-terrorism operation, but an operation of communication with people that, due to the obstruction of the peace process by the Governments of Spain and France, are seeking to destroy the military equipment and give it to the authorities,” said Michel Tubiana to Reuters.
This is “the opposite of an event or action of complicity in relation with a terrorist enterprise,” added the former president of the LDH, which formed part of this initiative.
Tubiana, Etcheverry and Berhocoirigoin explained his position in a letter published Friday by the web basque Mediabask.
“We, members of civil society, without any relationship of subordination with ETA, we have decided to start the process of disarmament of the armed organization, and proceed to the destruction of the first group of weapons,” says the letter.
Mediabask, which accuses the French police and Spanish to prevent the destruction of these weapons for its intervention in Louhossoa, also published an exchange of letters in which ETA shares the approach of delegating to civil society, “the political responsibility for the disarmament.”
The Spanish ministry said, however, that the material involved was to be used to “make a play” as that which, according to the Interior took place in February of 2014, “in which members of the ETA showed it to representatives of a non-governmental organization called the International Commission of Verification an impoverished displays of weapons and subsequently led to the terrorists themselves, without out of the same and being again in the power of the criminal gang”.
ETA announced in October 2011 the definitive abandonment of the armed struggle, after four decades of attacks and bombs that killed more than 800 people. Up to now has not been reached yet any agreement on the terms of its disarmament with the authorities in Spanish and French.
Along with the questioning of the five people arrested, the technical and scientific police are doing an inventory of these weapons and examinándolas to see if they were used in attacks.
According to a police source, the detainees could be prosecuted for destruction of evidence. The prosecutor’s office against terrorism in Paris is in charge of the case, said the source.
CFDT Basque Country denounced “arbitrary arrests” and a blow to the role of mediator of civil society. It has called for a protest Saturday afternoon in Bayonne against the intervention of the police.
Both the Governments of Paris and Madrid linked to the operation of the Friday with the discovery last October 12, a weapons depot in the forest of Compiègne and the detention on the 5th of November in Ascain (Pyrenees-Atlantiques) of the alleged leader of the military apparatus of ETA “and” two of his accomplices.”
Reuters
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