Former terrorists will fight for the independence of the Basque country by legal means. Basque terrorist organizations - separatist ideas - this This Basque Spain

The Basque Country and Freedom (Euskadi ta Askatasuna, ETA) was founded in 1959. Its goal was to create an independent socialist state on the Basque-populated lands.

The inspirer of the organization was the nationalist and revolutionary Sabino Arana Goiri, founder of the Basque nationalist party. As far back as the 19th century, Arana declared that Spain had turned the Basque Country into its colony, and demanded the complete independence of the Basque lands.

And in the 1930s, with the coming to power of General Francisco Franco, the Basque Country completely lost its autonomy.

The Basque language was banned, teaching and office work were conducted in Spanish. ETA was founded by young members of the Basque Nationalist Party as a resistance movement against the general's dictatorship.

Initially, ETA looked more like the Bolsheviks of 1905 than the terrorists. Its members tried to combine activities in the labor movement with political and military activities. True, if the Bolsheviks were preparing an armed uprising, then combat activity ETA was precisely terrorist. In the 1960s, they began to actively engage in explosions of police stations, barracks, railway lines, assassination attempts on gendarmes and officials. Moreover, their activities extended to the territory of the whole of Spain.

The Basques actively supported the activities of ETA. The organization was perceived primarily as fighters against the authoritarian regime.

ETA split in the mid-1960s when Franco set out to gradually democratize the regime. The organization was divided into nationalists and leftists. The former leaned towards legality, the latter released the document "Fundamental Directions", written in a leftist spirit. The goal is the socialist revolution, the methods are terrorism.

The ideologists of ETA were guided by the Albanian version of socialism - the Albanian leader Enver Hoxha proclaimed the country's complete self-sufficiency and almost completely closed it from the whole world.

In 1973, Franco stepped down from power, handing over the post to Admiral Carrero Blanco. He did not stay in office for long - already in December, ETA militants killed the new prime minister. Having rented an apartment in the center of Madrid, they dug under the street that Blanco used to go to church.

The terrorists did not spare the explosives - the one and a half ton armored car, on which the prime minister rode, soared into the air and, flying over a six-story building, fell onto the balcony of the Jesuit monastery.

The attackers were never found.

In the same year, ETA bombed the Rolando cafe, which was located next to the General Directorate of Security. 70 people were injured, 12 were killed. There were many smaller terrorist attacks.

Franco died in 1975. Spain moved along the path of democratization, the Basque Country was granted the broadest autonomy. However, ETA only stepped up its activities - the Basques considered them national heroes and the movement towards reconciliation with the new government was regarded by many residents as a betrayal.

The organization's activity peaked in the second half of the 1970s. Having already become terrorists in their purest form, they acted throughout the country. In 1979, ETA militants first killed a left-wing politician, the socialist Herman Gonzalez, who opposed them. In 1980, 118 people died at their hands.

The organization improved its financial situation by kidnapping people for ransom.

The last case was recorded in January 1996, during which time ETA abducted 77 people, of which eight were killed and ten were injured. Another method was the "revolutionary tax": the terrorists sent letters to Basque entrepreneurs, where they politely asked for a certain amount of money. If the entrepreneur did not do this, he received the next letter, already much less correctly composed, with threats of "proletarian wrath." It was usually decided not to wait for the third reminder.

The Spanish authorities, of course, tried to fight the terrorists, but it did not work out too well. So, in 1983, an anti-terrorist group was created, whose tasks included the destruction of militants.

Over the next four years, the fighters against terrorism managed to "eliminate" 27 innocent people, while ETA continued its activities.

In 1986, when France began to extradite the terrorists to the Spanish authorities, the militants blew up a car in Madrid. 12 people died, and the ETA leadership said that now members of the organization would attack French tourists and truckers.

Over time, the leaders of ETA still managed to catch and the terror began to gradually subside, but the terrorists had new personnel reserves - youth gangs that spread throughout the Basque Country. With their help, the terrorists periodically planted bombs in the trash cans, so in some cities in Spain it was decided to remove the trash cans from the streets altogether.

One of the largest terrorist attacks in last years happened in 2009.

In the city of Burgos, a car exploded, parked next to the barracks of the Civil Guard, where the police lived with their families. 46 people were injured.

ETA has repeatedly announced the termination of its activities. But, despite the peace talks, the militants continued to carry out terrorist attacks. In 2010-2011, the organization several times announced the rejection of armed struggle and that it was going to fight for the independence of the Basque Country by peaceful means.

Now ETA has declared disarmament. In a letter addressed to the world community, the terrorists say that they will hand over weapons to the authorities of France and Spain through the hands of intermediaries. Disarmament, however, will be more of a symbolic nature - the group has quite a few weapons left, and they have not been used in the past five years.

The Basque separatist ETA forces seemed like bloody monsters.
In the 21st century, against the backdrop of the planes of the World shopping center,
Chechen suicide bombers, Islamic fanatics and Somali pirates,
ETA looks like children playing in the sandbox, or
old-fashioned gentlemen in white gloves:
there are only two hundred fighters in the organization, terrorist attacks are committed
against the army, police or officials, about every explosion
reported in advance, the maximum number of victims per terrorist attack
after the 1987 record, it never exceeded two dozen people.
However, ETA is strong and continues its war today.

June 19, 1987 in Madrid turned out to be hot. In one of the capital's Hypercor supermarkets, customers, having left their cars in the underground parking lot, went up to the supermarket halls, scurried between the shelves, and rolled baskets loaded with purchases to the cash registers. Suddenly, there was a deafening explosion, the floor jumped and burst, the walls and ceiling collapsed, everything was covered in clouds of smoke and dust. Later, the Madrid police will publish a list of victims: 21 killed and 30 injured. Exploded car filled with explosives, left by terrorists in the underground parking under the supermarket. Responsibility for the explosion was claimed by ETA, a terrorist organization fighting for the independence of the people inhabiting a small patch of Spain called Basque Land. Later, ETA will apologize for the death of civilians - the attack was directed against the nearby commissariat. It was the bloodiest ETA action in the history of the organization. When in March 2004 the Spanish capital was rocked by 7 explosions in urban trains that took 200 lives, many security officials, despite the hysteria of the press, doubted that the explosions were organized by ETA: there were no anonymous warning calls usual for this organization, but the scale and cruelty of the largest in the entire history of Europe, terrorist attacks did not correspond to the “handwriting” of the Basque separatists. Indeed, a branch of al-Qaeda called the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades later claimed responsibility for the bombings. Basques, this time, had nothing to do with it.

WHO ARE THE BASQUES
The Basques are one of the oldest peoples in Europe, speaking an unusual language and having very peculiar cultural traditions. They are considered descendants of the Iberians and Celts, they are credited with Caucasian, Berber and even Jewish roots. This people arose 14 thousand years before our era, for which they are called the oldest people on the planet. Basques are different from other peoples inhabiting Spain. "We are not Spaniards," they say of themselves. They are considered unfriendly and quick-tempered, proud and suspicious, honest and proud. They are famous as fishermen and sailors (it is believed that they mastered the way to America long before Columbus). By the standards of the long overpopulated Old World, the Basques are a numerous people. There are more than a million of them, while only 44 million people live in all of Spain today. They inhabit the mountains and foothills of the Pyrenees on both sides of the Spanish-French border, and for a long time - even before the arrival of the Romans, the mountains were already inhabited by this small people, who in their history successfully survived the invasion of the Romans, several waves of barbarian invasions and the Arab conquest. However, it was not possible for the Basques to create a state: the people were surrounded by strong warlike neighbors, and small principalities could not compete with neighboring Castile, Navarre and France. By the XIV century, the Basque lands were completely absorbed by them, and later became part of Spain. The Basques have never been distinguished by devotion to the Spanish crown and fidelity to Spanish laws, but for hundreds of years they fought for their independence with varying success: already in 1425, the Basque Land received the status of an autonomous region. Later, the Spanish rulers Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile graciously agreed with this status. This continued until 1876, when King Alphonse XII liquidated the autonomy by a special decree, and it was restored already in the 20th century, in 1936. However, during the time of the fascist General Franco, the Basques got hard: they became the most oppressed nation in Spain. They were forbidden to publish books and newspapers, to teach in mother tongue euskera, to call their children Basque names. They were not allowed to sing their folk songs, perform bagpipe dances and wear national costumes. In 1939, Franco officially declared the Basques "traitors to the motherland", the authorities sent police units and military gendarmerie to the Basque Country ... There is nothing surprising that, as a result, the proud and quick-tempered people took up arms.

"BASQUE COUNTRY AND FREEDOM"
In 1959, 20 years after the Francoist pogrom of 1939 and the defeat of the Republicans, a new organization Basque resistance to the fascist regime - Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), translated - "Basque Country and Freedom". It is believed that ETA spun off from the Basque Nationalist Party, founded in 1894. The ideologist of this party was Sabino Arana, who back in the 19th century declared that Spain had turned the Basque Country into its colony and demanded the complete independence of the Basque lands. In 1959, several young members of the BNP, dissatisfied with the party's refusal to fight, left it and founded the ETA. Gradually, it grew from a small group of students into a powerful underground army and stood at the forefront of the Basque liberation movement. Very soon, ETA adopted terrorist methods - the killings of prominent politicians and kidnappings and ransom entrepreneurs. The practice of the "revolutionary tax", which is collected from Basque entrepreneurs and used to support the organization, was widely used (and is still used to this day). In the early 1960s, ETA began blowing up police stations, barracks, railways, kill gendarmes and officials. After the repressions of 1962, the organization curtailed its activities, but since 1964 terror resumed and became systematic. Despite extreme measures against anyone suspected of having links with ETA, the terror did not subside. Everyone was under threat - from a simple civil servant to a general. In the 1960s and 70s, ETA was the only real opposition to the dictatorship, and many Spaniards sympathized with it, who had many reasons to be dissatisfied with the regime. The organization's popularity skyrocketed after its fighters killed secret police commissioner Melton Manzañas in 1968, who widely used torture against oppositionists who fell into the hands of the security services. And ETA's highest "political achievement" was the assassination of Spanish Prime Minister Carrero Blanco in December 1973. Winner in civil war Franco was powerless in front of a handful of ETA militants.

In 1975, after the death of the dictator, the Basque Country received everything that ETA fought for: wide autonomy, its own government, president, parliament and police, the right to independently collect taxes, the authorities of the region began to control the education sector themselves, they began to teach in the Basque language in schools . Most radio stations and TV channels began to broadcast in Basque. ETA acquired a political wing, the Yeri Batasuna (People's Unity) party, which could represent the interests of terrorists in the parliament of the Basque Country. It would seem: the triumph of separatism. But ETA's support waned sharply as many in Spain decided that the time had come for ETA and other resistance groups to lay down their arms and move through the normal political process. However, that just didn't happen...

The time of the most active terror was precisely the years 1976-1980, when everything that ETA fought for was, as it seemed, achieved. But the militants continued to hunt for judges, high-ranking military and civil officials, and intractable businessmen. Apparently, the group's business, built on terror, turned out to be quite profitable. An adjustment of ideology was required, and from now on, the goal of ETA was declared to be the struggle against the Spanish colonialists for the creation of a now independent state. The Spanish side called on ETA to stop terror and offered in exchange for this a complete amnesty for all the fighters of the organization, but was refused by the separatists.

Since that time, more than 900 people have died at the hands of militants, including about four hundred politicians of various ranks, officials, entrepreneurs, more than two hundred civil guards, about two hundred policemen, and more than a hundred military personnel. The victims of the terrorists were five generals, an absolutely apolitical Admiral Carvajal de Colon, former chairman of the Constitutional Court Francisco Tomás y Valiente, Fernando Mujica, personal lawyer former head government of Felipe Gonzalez. In August 1995, the militants even intended to kill the head of state, King Juan Carlos I, by firing a Stinger missile, bought from Osama bin Laden himself, at his Boeing, but the conspiracy was uncovered in time, its participants were arrested and convicted. During its existence, ETA carried out more than 100 terrorist attacks in hotels, restaurants and boarding houses, more than 80 - at airports, railways and roads, and more than 30 - on all kinds of tourist sites.

HOW THIS IS WORKED
THIS - small organization. Today, the number of members does not exceed 500 people, of which 300 are engaged in security and intelligence, and only 200 are militants. The organization consists of detachments of 20-30 people that operate only in the Basque Country, and separate "mobile groups" that operate in major cities. Many ETA fighters have been trained in Lebanon, Libya, South Yemen, Nicaragua and Cuba, and ETA has strong ties to the Irish Republican Army.
On average, a militant is involved in terror for three years, then usually he either dies or is arrested. ETA's finances consist of a "revolutionary tax" on entrepreneurs, bank robberies, kidnappings for ransom and voluntary donations. The annual income from the "revolutionary tax" is about 120 thousand euros. The money goes to organizing the underground and terrorist attacks, buying weapons and living in exile, as well as helping prisoners and their relatives.
Except military apparatus, the structure of ETA includes ETA-EKIN - the political leadership, and organizations that promote Basque culture, such as schools of the Basque language and culture: from the very first days of life, young Basques are taught that their people are suffering under the yoke of the enemy, that the main goal in their life is self-sacrifice in the name of the nation. Thus, the killed and arrested fighters are being replaced by a new generation of separatists from youth groups. They operate in Basque cities and towns, clash with the police, set fire to cars and attack the houses of Basque police officers, go to demonstrations demanding the release of militants from prisons, throw Molotov cocktails on city buses, bank branches, shops, build barricades on the streets . The separatists enjoy prestige among young people, and many seek to emulate them: posters and graffiti praising the exploits of ETA fighters can be seen on the walls of buildings in the cities of the Basque Country, and banners with slogans in support of imprisoned ETA members hang from balconies in every alley. It's simple: the Basques sympathize not with ETA itself, but with the fact that it has challenged powerful Madrid and is waging an undeclared war with the center, the main milestones of which are:

Explosion in a cafe in Madrid on September 3, 1974 - 12 victims; explosion at two railway stations in Madrid on July 29, 1979 - 7 people were killed; explosion in the square Dominican Republic in Madrid on July 14, 1986 - 12 police officers were killed; terrorist attack in a supermarket in Barcelona on June 19, 1987 - 21 people died, 45 were injured; a car bomb near a police station in Zaragoza killed 11 people on 11 December 1987; explosion in the building of the police station on May 29, 1991 - 10 people were killed; explosion of 5 bombs different cities Spain June 22, 2002 - ETA tried to disrupt the summit European Union in Seville.

THIS TODAY
In Spain itself, the attitude towards ETA until 1997 was more or less tolerant: the Spaniards remembered the struggle of ETA with the Franco regime. However, what happened in the summer of 1997 changed the attitude of the population towards the organization.

In July 1997, separatists kidnapped 29-year-old Basque politician and provincial economist Miguel Angel Blanco, a representative of the ruling People's Party in the Basque region. The kidnappers demanded the release of 460 prisoners from Spanish prisons and allowed them to return to the Basque Country. Madrid rejected this demand, and Blanco was found on the street with two bullets in his head. Millions of Spaniards, outraged by the killing, took to the streets to protest, demanding an end to the bloody violence. Unexpectedly for everyone, even some of its members came out against such actions of ETA.

The ETA leadership had to go to unprecedented measures: In September 1998, the organization announced that it was suspending combat operations indefinitely and begins negotiations with the Spanish government. As a result, ETA did not commit a single terrorist attack for 14 months. Explosions and shootings in the Basque Country resumed only after the Spanish government arrested 66 people on charges of collaborating with ETA.

The police and the government constantly have to pretend that the situation with ETA is under control: the Spanish Ministry of Internal Affairs regularly claims that the police know almost everything about ETA: names, nicknames, methods of action, organization structure, locations, number of militants. More than two thousand police officers are constantly involved in operations against the organization, who were trained by specialists from the United States, Germany, Great Britain and Israel. But the experience of fighting ETA shows that it is impossible to deal with the organization by force: even the "death squadrons" that were created in the 80s to fight ETA turned out to be powerless, despite the fact that they consisted of mercenaries experienced in mass " purges." Do not affect the situation and "point" actions: neither the arrest in May 2008 of the head of ETA, Javier Lopez-Peña, who has been on the wanted list since 1983, nor the arrest of his successor Cherokee in November 2008, nor regular raids and arrests of ordinary members of ETA. In an analytical report of the Civil Guard for 2008, the security forces summed up the disappointing result of the half-century struggle against ETA: "There is no doubt that ETA has an infrastructure, stable and reliable contacts and connections, a widely ramified network not only in Spain, but also in France, large material, including weapons, and financial and economic capabilities, as well as human resources, which allows it to remain stable in front of the forces of law and order and continue to conduct appropriate operations."

This conclusion is clearly illustrated by reports of ETA shares. recent months:
The assassination in the Basque city of Azpeitia of businessman Ignacio Uria Mendizabal, a contractor for the construction of a railway line (December 2008).
Explosion in Madrid of a van filled with explosives near the office of the firm Ferrovial, which is building a high-speed highway from the Basque Country to Madrid. (February 2009);
Assassination attempt on Judge Balthazar Garson, known for his trials of extremists. The militants planned to send the judge a gift-wrapped bottle of poisoned cognac, accompanied by a note whose fictional author, allegedly a law student, admired the judge's success in the fight against terrorism; (June 2009)
Terror attack near the office of the ruling party of the Basque Country in which a policeman was killed (June 2009);
Explosion at the office of the Socialist Party in the city of Durango (July 2009);

ETA is not going to give up and stop the terror. Several times the organization lost its goals and invented new ones, experienced “cleansings” and truces. For fifty years of its existence, the world has changed, but ETA has not changed with its main slogan: "The Basque Country and Freedom."

ETA was founded in 1959 to fight for national self-determination, but its roots are in recent history go back to the years of the civil war, the bombing of Guernica and the elimination of the autonomy of the Basque Country by the dictator Francisco Franco in 1937. Since 1968, the separatists have switched to terror tactics. Among their victims are the official successor of Franco and the prime minister of his government, Luis Carrero Blanco, the descendant of Columbus, Vice Admiral Cristobal Colon de Carvajal, politicians and administrators of various ranks, military and police officials, intelligence officers and even former associates, who, like those killed in 1986 year of Maria Dolores Gonzalez - condemned the violence and went to negotiations with the authorities. In 1998, 6 people were killed. The Spaniards were especially outraged by the news of the ETA conspiracy directed against the beloved king Juan Carlos. In July 1997, after the murder of a young municipal councilor, Miguel Angel Blanco, taken hostage by separatists, over 6 million people took to the streets of Spanish cities under the slogan of condemning ETA. Following this, virtually the entire leadership of Eri Batasuna's party was arrested and convicted.

The turning point in the Spanish government's fight against ETA came after. Initially, the Spanish government blamed ETA for the bombings (for which it later paid with a loss in the elections), but then it turned out that the bloodiest terrorist attacks in the history of Spain were the work of the Islamists. After that, it became obvious that ETA's terrorist activities would no longer have the expected effect.

• eternal separatism. A report by "Agentura" journalists from the Basque country
• The Spanish system of combating terrorism: before and after the Madrid bombings

Timeline of ETA terror

• 1959 - ETA founded
• 1961 - an attempt to derail a train on which Franco-supporting politicians traveled. The attempt failed.
• 1968 - ETA's first victim is Meliton Manzanasa, chief of the secret police in San Sebastian.
• 1968 - All-Spanish anti-terror campaign, new anti-terrorism law, 1963 arrests in total.
• 1968, December - "Burgos process". 19 ETA militants arrested and convicted (six were sentenced to death, but their execution was commuted to imprisonment)
• 1969-70 - several ETA leaders were captured and convicted by a military court
• 1973, December - the assassination of the country's prime minister, Admiral Carrero Blanco
• 1976 - The Suarez government tries to negotiate with the Basques, which fail.
• 1976-1980 - the heyday of ETA, the number of ETA members reaches 500, of which 200 are active militants
• 1977 - ETA fighters killed 73 people
• 1978 - The political, legal wing of ETA "Herri Batasuna" (Herri Batasuna) is founded. ETA fighters committed the first murder of a socialist - Herman Gonzalez.
• 1980 - the bloodiest year of ETA: 118 people were killed by the Basques in all of Spain. At the same time, it is believed that there are only 50 people in the ETA.
• 1984 - Socialists General Lakasi and Enrique Casa are assassinated.
• 1981 - self-dissolution of the military wing of ETA
• 1984-1985 - self-dissolution of several separate ETA groups.
• 1986 - ETA terror surge. Until now, ETA militants, as fighters against the Franco regime, used the opportunity to receive political asylum in France, but in the mid-80s, the governments of Spain and France were negotiating to change this rule. And one of the ETA leaders, Muhiko Garmenda, called for blowing up French trucks in protest.
• 1986, First half - committed 20 terrorist attacks in Spain, 28 dead.
• 1989 - in France, the head of ETA, Jose Urruticoechea Bengoechea (Jose Turner), was arrested and sent to jail
• Early 90s - Eloseki Sabaleta (Waldo), Turnera's first deputy arrested
• 1991 - Jesús Arcus Arana, organizer of ETA armed actions, was arrested in France.
• 1992 - Mujiko Garmendia and ETA ideologue José Luis Alvarez were arrested in France, as well as ETA explosives expert Maria Arregue Erostarbe and ETA treasurer Sabieno Suba
• 1992 - ETA murder of two soldiers in Barcelona and an explosion in Madrid, during which 5 people died.
• 1995 - assassination attempt on King Juan Carlos of Spain
• 1995 - Assassination attempt on José Maria Aznar, leader of the right-wing People's Party. The bomb was planted in a car. The politician escaped death by pure chance, not leaving in this car in time. She exploded without him.
• March 1996 - Francisco Tomas y Valente, a former justice of the country's Supreme Court, is assassinated in Madrid.
• 1996 - Aznar's party wins elections in Spain. ETA is sure that the right-wing politician is the successor of Franco's cause, which, in general, for them is not far from the truth, Aznara was and remains against the isolation of the Basques.
• 1996 is the year of terror against Aznar's right-wing party.
• July 1997 - ETA kidnaps and kills Basque Council member, lowly economist Miguel Angel Blanco. Throughout Spain, the attitude towards the Basques is deteriorating. 6 million Spaniards come out across the country to protest against Basque separatism.
• December 1997 - 23 Herri Batasuna leaders were arrested and imprisoned for 7 years for collaborating with ETA.
• February 1997 - Herri Batasuna chooses new leadership, even more radical than before.
• March 1998 - main political parties Spain are involved in the negotiations, wanting to settle the situation in the Basque country. The Spanish government is not involved in these negotiations.
• September 1998 - ETA leadership officially announces an indefinite truce, hoping for political negotiations
• July 2000 - ETA announces the end of the truce and that a new wave of terror is coming

Personalities

IdoyaIrene ("Margarita") Born in 1964. ETA militant, temporarily expelled from the organization. Participated in the assassination attempt on Broseta. She took part in two attacks on members of the guard in Madrid, during which 17 people were killed and dozens were injured. Once, against the "will of the party", as they say, she went AWOL - she committed an unscheduled terrorist attack, for which she was suspended from active work. Its descriptions are in the special services of many countries. Thanks to which it is known that she was for some time in Algeria and in France. In October 1991, she was already in Spain again, as she was seen during an attempted explosion in Zaragossa.

FranciscoMujica Garmendia ("Paquito") former leader THIS. In mid-1999, the French authorities, where he was serving a 10-year sentence for participating in a conspiracy, handed him over to his homeland, where he was brought before supreme court Spain. Paquito's trial began in August 2000 - he was accused of involvement in several bombings. He acknowledged his affiliation with ETA, but denied that he held a leadership position in the group. The leading news agencies of the world assumed that he was facing a 30-year prison term, but their predictions did not come true. On October 6, 2000, the former ETA commander was found guilty of organizing several terraks and sentenced to 109 years in prison. Three days later, the ETA militants expressed their attitude to the verdict - on October 9, in Granada, the chief prosecutor of Andalusia was shot right on the street.

See also "Agentura":

• Marina Latysheva.
• Dominic Ridley, The Guardian

The Spanish terrorist organization ETA is beheaded. It took the Spanish and French police four years to track down the leader of the Basque separatist group, Mikel Albizu Iriarte, who was arrested in France. The question now is whether the arrest of the separatist leader will help stop the violence in a country where more than 800 people have been killed by terrorists in the past 40 years.

The leaders of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of France and Spain unanimously called the operation "historic". However, they also admit that this is not the end. "Although we have struck terrorists, the intelligence agencies, the police and the governments of both Spain and France must remain as vigilant as possible. We must not relax. And all our citizens must understand this." These words of the Spanish Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso should be understood in such a way that new arrests will follow in the near future.

Over the past few years, when the authorities of Spain and France announced "intensification of the fight against terrorism", about 150 people were arrested, in one way or another connected with extremists. The latest major victory for the secret services was the capture of the former head of the ETA military wing, Ignacio Gracia Arregui, who was arrested in France in September 2000.

Sunday's operation, which involved one and a half hundred police and intelligence officers, was carried out simultaneously in seven cities in southwestern France and in the Spanish province of Burgos. Arrested 21 people. Several caches of weapons (including machine guns and grenade launchers) and explosives (a total of 700 kilograms), explosive devices, large sums money, as well as computers with a database of terrorists. Their contents are now being carefully studied by the intelligence services of both countries.

From Spanish justice, 43-year-old Mikel Albizu Iriarte (nicknamed "Antsa") has been hiding for the past 10 years. He became the leader of ETA in the early 1990s - immediately after the mass arrests of almost the entire previous leadership of the organization.

Ants started fighting for the independence of the Basque Country in the late 1970s. The political choice was not made by chance - Albizu was born into a family of activists of the Basque national movement in San Sebastian, the city where many famous "fighters for the independence of the autonomy" came from. Among the activists of the underground cells "Ants" found his fighting girlfriend - the current civil wife Maria Soledad Iparragirre (nicknamed "Anboto"). She was also born into a Basque separatist family. 20-year-old Maria began to actively engage in terrorist activities after her fiancé was shot during a police raid. "Anboto", arrested at the same time as Albisu, is one of the few women who managed to take the lead roles in the group.

The charges that may be brought against Mikel Albis look innocent compared to the crimes that Maria is accused of. It has been proven to be directly linked to at least 15 murders committed between 1984 and 1992. The most serious thing that the Spanish police have to date on Miquel is facilitating the escape of two ETA activists from prison in 1985. True, a few years ago, for ties with criminal gangs a French court sentenced him to five years in prison. Of course, in absentia.

How exactly the special services, after so many years of searching, managed to reach Albisa and Iparragirra is unknown. Spanish and French police came close to capturing "Antsy" last April. Then Felix Ignacio Esparza, who was in charge of the "terrorist supply service", was arrested. However, then Mikel and Maria managed to escape.

From the details of the operation, it is known that the leader of the group and his wife were arrested in Salies-de-Béarn, located near Pau. In addition to them, in the house (apparently the headquarters of the organization) there were two more people (they were also detained) and their minor daughter. During the search, forged passports and documents were seized. Both refuse to testify. Most likely, the Spanish government will demand the deportation of "Anboto" in the near future. Further fate Mikel is not entirely clear - a paradox, but in Spain even a preliminary investigation is not underway against him.

The police hope that with the capture of "Antsy" they will be able to contact other members of the organization and their bases. Of course, if Mikel Albizu becomes more talkative.

The most famous ETA crimes

Since the late 1960s, more than 800 people have died as a result of terrorist attacks and attacks organized by ETA activists. Among the victims are the official successor of the dictator Franco and the prime minister of his government, Luis Carrero Blanco (killed in December 1973), a descendant of Columbus, Vice Admiral Cristobal Colon de Carvajal, politicians of various ranks, military and police officers, intelligence officers and even former associates. So, in 1986, Maria Dolores Gonzalez was killed, condemning the violence and starting negotiations with the authorities. It is known that the terrorists were preparing an assassination attempt on King Juan Carlos. In July 1997, following the assassination of municipal councilor Miguel Angel Blanco, taken hostage, several million Spaniards took to the streets to protest against the organization's activities. Following this, almost the entire leadership of the Batasuna party, which is considered the political wing of the group, was arrested.

History of ETA

terrorist group ETA aims to achieve the independence of the Basque Country, located partly on the territory of Spain, partly on the territory of France. The organization was founded in 1959 as a result of a split in the youth organization of the Basque Nationalist Party (BNP). The BNP is the largest and most influential political formation Basque Country, who headed the autonomous government of this area until the fall of the republican government in the spring of 1939. Having begun armed resistance to Francoism, ETA simultaneously proclaimed as its ultimate goal the creation of an independent Basque state "in those territories where the Basques historically live." Since 1968, the separatists have switched to terror tactics. Now ETA is included in the "black lists" of terrorist organizations in the United States and the European Union.

On July 15, 2012, the British police, an alleged member of ETA, who managed to hide from justice for ten years.

The Basque terrorist organization ETA (ETA - Euzkadi Ta Azkatasuna, in Basque means "Homeland and Freedom") was founded on July 31, 1959. The initiators of its formation were activists of the banned Basque Nationalist Party (Euzko Alderdi Jeltzalea), who were not satisfied with the refusal of their associates from the armed struggle against the regime of dictator Francisco Franco, who in 1937 abolished the autonomy of the Basque Country, a region located in northern Spain and southwestern France , and continued the policy of oppression of the Basque minority.

The organization finally took shape in 1962 at a congress of left-wing nationalists who sought to combine legal activity with underground. The creation of political, military, labor and cultural fronts was proclaimed, main goal activities, the formation of an independent Basque state was announced.

In the early years of its existence, the organization enjoyed broad support from ordinary Spaniards.

According to some reports, the first victim of the Basque terrorists was the 22-month-old girl Begoña Urros Ibarrola, who was burned alive as a result of a terrorist attack committed by ETA supporters on June 27, 1960 on railway station Amara in San Sebastian. ETA leaders did not take responsibility for the train bombing.

Also in 1961, an unfortunate hitchhike was made by a militant group of Basque extremists to derail a train carrying political figures who were Franco's supporters.

On June 7, 1968, the ETA militants carried out the first high-profile terrorist attack, as a result of which policeman José Pardines was killed. Since that moment, terror has become one of the main means of political and national struggle of the organization.

The deadliest terrorist attack, which killed 21 people, was carried out by ETA in 1987, when it blew up a car in the parking lot of a Hipercor supermarket in Barcelona.

In response, the Spanish government adopted new law against terrorism, 1963 militants were arrested.

In December 1973, Prime Minister Luis Carrero Blanco became a victim of ETA militants, who was blown up in his car in Madrid.

In 1976, the government of Adolfo Suarez González made an attempt at reconciliation with the ETA leaders. Some political prisoners were released, autonomy was introduced in the Basque Country. However, negotiations with the leadership of the party were unsuccessful, the ETA activists continued to insist on maximalist demands.
1976 - 1980 in the history of ETA became the time of the most active terrorist activities. The main target of assassination attempts were military and civil officials of high rank, judges. The number of members of the group itself reached 500, of which almost half were militants. The organization was divided into detachments of 20-30 people, operating, as a rule, in the Basque Country, there were separate "mobile groups" - in Madrid, Valencia, Barcelona and other major cities in Spain.

In the early 1980s, ETA experienced a series of ideological splits: a fascist wing emerged, and moderate members of the party broke away and went legal.

In 1995, ETA launched an unsuccessful assassination attempt on King Juan Carlos. Information about this made many Spaniards, who sincerely loved the monarch, condemn the activities of the nationalist group.

From the first years, the most important source of funds for the ETA cash desk was kidnapping for ransom. Only one of the nearly 80 hostages taken by the extremists managed to escape. José Antonio Ortega Lara was kidnapped in January 1996 and held for 532 days. He was released by the police on July 1, 1997.

In July 1997, after the murder of a young municipal councilor, Miguel Angel Blanco, taken hostage by separatists, over 6 million people took to the streets of Spanish cities under the slogan of condemning ETA. Following this, the Spanish police arrested and convicted almost the entire leadership of the party.

ETA has 858 victims in its history.

ETA has repeatedly announced a truce and an end to the struggle, but each time it violated these truces, committing new bloody terrorist attacks.

The longest truce was the ceasefire announced in March 2006, which formally lasted 437 days and was canceled by terrorists in June 2007, although it was actually violated on December 30, 2006. On that day, two people were killed in a car bomb that was parked at Madrid's Barajas airport.

The latest terrorist attack fatal Basque radicals ETA committed July 30, 2009 in Mallorca, laying explosives near the gendarmerie building in the city of Palma Nova. As a result, two police officers were killed.

On January 10, 2011, the ETA organization, putting forward as the main demand the recognition of the independence of the Basque Country political processes, including independence. "In response to this, the government demanded the complete dissolution of the banned party.

Since the announcement by ETA of an indefinite truce, Spanish and French law enforcement detained a total of more than 70 alleged ETA members, including several possible gang leaders, seized almost two tons explosives, a significant number of documents, weapons, drugs, discovered several caches and a laboratory for the manufacture of explosives in Portugal. The creation of two more terrorist bases in Portugal and Spanish Catalonia was prevented.

On May 28, 2012, the leader of the Basque separatist group ETA, Oroitz Gurruchaga Gogorza, was arrested in the French city of Kona.

Together with him, French law enforcement agencies arrested five more ETA members.