Crackdown on Basque separatists - Los Angeles Times
ETA in Spain are still active with the upcoming March genaral election
Authorities in Spain arrest suspected members of the political wing of ETA and ban two other political parties.
MADRID — Amid a bitterly divisive campaign for next month’s national elections, the Spanish government is cracking down on Basque separatists and their potential ballot-box voice with a string of arrests and the banishing of political parties.
The police and judicial actions underscore a sobering backdrop to the March 9 elections: the collapse of a landmark truce with the armed Basque organization ETA that had appeared to have ended the decades-old conflict. There are no negotiations or other prospects for peace on the horizon.
That will exacerbate tensions in the contest for a new parliament and prime minister, elections already threatened by possible violence, according to officials. Three days before the last national elections here, in 2004, Islamic militants killed nearly 200 people in the deadliest terrorist attack in continental Europe in recent years.
Spanish authorities this week arrested 14 people suspected of being members of ETA’s political wing, a banned party called Batasuna.
Acting on a request from the government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, a high court judge, Baltasar Garzon, directed a series of nighttime raids rounding up the suspects. On Wednesday, Garzon interrogated the 14, who are suspected of attempting to reconstitute the leadership of Batasuna, which was largely dismantled late last year.
Tags: spain
