Countries combine forces to check Basque group

A suspect is bundled into a police car during the combined operation. Photo / AP

Europe's most intransigent armed separatist group, Eta, has been left reeling after the arrest of its top military commander in a Franco-Spanish police operation that produced eight further detentions.

Jurdan Martitegi Lazaso, the third senior figure in the Basque organisation to be captured in five months, was arrested as he drove to a rendezvous near the southern French town of Perpignan.

Martitegi is said to have been preparing a new cadre of militants to mount terror attacks in Spain. Police seized three pistols and suspected bomb-making material. They also said they had rounded up another six suspects in the Basque country as part of the same operation.

Martitegi, 28, had gone into hiding in France to evade a Spanish arrest warrant issued in connection with several terrorist attacks in 2007, including the killing of a policeman.

Detained with him was Alex Uriarte Cuadrado, who had driven to the rendezvous from Spain, little realising that he was being tailed by Spanish police on the orders of the anti-terrorist examining magistrate, Baltasar Garzon, back in Madrid.

Spanish police crossed the Pyrenees and linked up with their French counterparts, who had been following Martitegi and another militant, Gorka Aspitarte, as they drove in a stolen vehicle with false plates to the tranquil village of Montauriol, in the foothills of the Pyrenees southwest of Perpignan.

This Franco-Spanish co-operation - strengthened in 2007 to allow Spanish security forces to operate on French soil - was crucial to the operation's success, and that of previous recent police action. Three top leaders detained since November were all picked up in France.

This new level of co-operation was sealed during Nicholas Sarkozy's stint as French Interior Minister, following decades of mutual suspicion between the two countries over how to deal with armed separatists, many of whom had found a safe haven in France. Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, Spain's Interior Minister, was said to have been in constant contact with his French counterpart Michele Alliot Marie throughout the operation.

Eta's previous military leader, Aitzol Iriondo, was arrested in France in December, just three weeks after his predecessor, Garikoitz Aspiazu, known as Txeroki, had been caught, having been tailed by police for a month. Another Eta leader, Javier Lopez Pena, was arrested last May. All were considered hardliners opposed to Eta's nine-month ceasefire that ended with the bombing of Madrid airport in December 2006.

It appears Eta militants can no longer count on the cushion of local sympathy in militant circles that they may once enjoyed. The organisation is thought to be riven with disagreements over whether to resurrect the process of dialogue with the authorities that was shattered by the 2006 airport bombing.

Rubalcaba was unequivocal on this: "Dialogue is in the past and the past never returns. The only question is whether Eta stops of its own volition or because we force it."

IN CUSTODY

Jurdan Martitegi Lazaso

Age: 28

Who: The suspected Eta military leader. Known as "The Giant" because he is 2.01m. Martitegi allegedly took over Eta's leadership following the arrest of the previous suspected commander, Aitzol Iriondo, in December.

Wanted: The Spanish Government alleges Martitegi was involved in a car bombing in September in Santona that killed an Army officer and injured six other people. He was also connected to at least two other car bombings.

Plot: The Government said previously that seized Eta documents had shown that the group planned to bring down an aircraft carrying King Juan Carlos or Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodríguez Zapatero using surface-to-air missiles.

Arrests: Spanish and French police have arrested 22 suspected Eta members in the past year.

- INDEPENDENT