FOR THE third time in less than five years an Eta chief has fallen into police hands.
Aitor Elizaran Aguilar, alleged leader of the Basque separatist movement, and his accomplice Oihana San Vicente (32), were armed and carrying false papers when they were arrested by French police near Nantes on Monday afternoon while driving a stolen Audi A-3 car.
Elizaran (30), born in France and the son of a Basque separatist exile, is believed to have been the man who issued instructions from the leadership in France to its militants in Spain.
He was promoted to political chief when the previous leader, Javier Lopez Peña, alias Thierry, was arrested by French police in Bordeaux in May 2008. Thierry had taken over the reins in July 2007 from Juan Cruz Maiza following his arrest.
Elizaran and eight other members of Segi, the illegal youth wing of Batasuna, have been on the run since 2002 when an international arrest warrant was issued for them.
They are charged with a long list of kale borroka (street violence) attacks in San Sebastian – where they fire-bombed a Socialist party office – in Bilbao and other Basque towns.
The detention of Elizaran and San Vicente comes less than a week after that of Arnaldo Otegi and other leaders of Batasuna, Eta’s banned political wing.
Anti-terrorist police believe, but say they have no proof, that Otegi – who was only recently released from jail after serving a sentence for promoting terrorism – delivered instructions from Elizaran for a new Eta campaign of violence.
“There seems to be a clear link but we have no concrete proof. It is too soon to tell,” said interior minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba yesterday.
Batasuna, formerly Herri Batasuna (People United) or HB was banned by the Supreme Court in 2003. Since then a number of quasi-political parties and associations with separatist sympathies have been formed to replace it, only to be subsequently declared illegal and many of their leaders imprisoned.
Although Eta has been severely weakened with the arrest by French and Spanish police of almost 500 suspects, including many senior members, over the past five years, it is far from being a spent force. In June they showed their strength once more, killing a police inspector near Bilbao by detonating a bomb under his car.
At the beginning of August they planted a massive bomb in Burgos outside a building housing civil guards and their families. It exploded without causing serious casualties, but the attack bore a sinister similarity to one in Zaragoza in 1987 when 11 people, including five children, were killed.
In July two young civil guards were killed by a large car bomb in Palma de Majorca, and two days later two more bombs exploded nearby, causing considerable damage but no injuries in an underground car park and a Palma restaurant popular with foreign tourists.
These attacks were evidence, if any were needed, that Eta had resurrected its “beach bombing” campaign in which, for many summers, they have detonated explosive devices in beach cafes, hotels and restaurants aimed at harming Spain’s lucrative tourist industry by frightening foreign visitors.
The Majorca bombs were all close to Marivent Palace, the summer residence of King Juan Carlos who has been an Eta target on repeated occasions.
It is believed the nearest they came to carrying out their attack was in 1995 when three men were arrested as they were plotting to assassinate the king using high-powered rifles as he sailed on his yacht, Fortuna.