THE Spanish High Court in Madrid sentenced two Basque separatists to prison for 930 years and six months each for providing the car used in a 1993 bomb attack that killed seven people, court documents published yesterday showed.
The court said it had proved that the ETA activists, Jose Gabriel Zabala and Gonzalo Rodriguez, drove the car, which they had stolen a year earlier and hidden in a warehouse, to Madrid packed with explosives.
Other unidentified members of ETA (Basque Homeland and Freedom) moved the car to a neighbourhood in northern Madrid and triggered the blast as an Army vehicle was passing.
Six army officers and the civilian driver were killed and 39 people were injured by the explosion.
"They were perfectly aware that it - the car - was going to be used to carry out a terrorist action, although it was not clear if they knew in a concrete form what it would consist of the sentence said, adding that the two were "integrated in the terrorist organisation ETA".
Zabala and Rodriguez were the first to be tried and sentenced for the attack.
ETA has killed some 800 people since it began a violent campaign for Basque independence in 1968.
Spaniards of all political persuasions united yesterday to mourn a former Socialist leader in the Basque region who was assassinated on Tuesday in another presumed ETA attack.