29 July 2009

ETA, at it again

Giles Tremlett has an article in the Guardian about the latest ETA bombing:
The 200kg bomb that shattered the early morning peace of Burgos today was a reminder that, fifty years after it was founded, the armed Basque separatist group ETA is still stubbornly devoted to violence.
Europe's last major violent separatist group is, however, a shadow of its former self. Close cooperation with France has seen Spain's anti-terrorist police repeatedly strike blows against ETA. Over the past eighteen months alone, for example, they claim to have caught the head of ETA's military machine— and his successors— on four separate occasions. Other Western intelligence services are helping to track ETA's French-based leadership. Sources close to Spain's anti-terrorist police admit that the large number of ETA activists currently being caught "by luck" in routine French road blocks are almost always the victims of secret intelligence operations. The results show. ETA has killed just nine people in six years. That compares with 23 deaths in 2000 alone. The total tally of deaths caused by a group born in the dark days of General Francisco Franco's dictatorship is 856.
Attempts to wean ETA off violence have failed. The last ceasefire, called in March of 2006, ended nine months later with a surprise bomb attack at Madrid's Barajas airport that killed two people. Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has ruled out a return to talks and now relies on anti-terrorist police to contain the damage ETA can do. Senior members among the more than 700 ETA prisoners in jail have recently called for it to abandon violence. "It is time to pull down the blinds," one member, Txema Matanzas, said.
Those now controlling the group obviously disagree. Their target today was a barracks housing officers and families, including children, of ETA's greatest enemy, the Guardia Civil police force. Police already knew ETA had identified the barracks as a target, but failed to spot the car bomb parked in a street behind them. The message was clear. ETA is still here. It is ready to kill.
Rico says the Brits used 'Eta' in the original article, which is a Japanese word describing a low-caste group of outcasts, but he's changed it to the more-proper ETA, which is the acronym for Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, meaning Basque Homeland and Freedom.

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