FRANCE: French anti-terrorist police arrested a man described as the most senior military commander of the armed Basque separatist group ETA yesterday, dealing a blow to western Europe's most active guerrilla force.
In the second swoop in a week, Bordeaux detectives and officers of the national anti-terror squad arrested the man along with three other ETA suspects in a dawn raid in the village of Lons, west of Pau in south-west France.
The Spanish Interior Minister, Mr Angel Acebes, said the arrest of Mr Gorka Palacios Alday (29) marked "one of the most important days in the struggle against ETA".
French police, who announced the arrests, also said Mr Palacios was the armed group's No 1 following the recapture last Thursday of Ibon Fernandez Iradi almost a year after his escape from custody in France.
Mr Acebes said the three suspects arrested along with Mr Palacios also belonged to ETA's "operational leadership . . . responsible for planning and carrying out attacks," and named two of them as Nigo Vallejo Franco and Juan Luis Rubenach Roig, the latter wanted in connection with a number of killings.
Close co-operation between French and Spanish police has led to scores of arrests of senior ETA suspects in recent years. Before yesterday's arrests, 175 suspected ETA members or collaborators had been detained this year.
Police in Spain named Mr Palacios in 2000 as the man they suspected of shooting dead a 50-year-old city councillor in front of his wife and daughter.
ETA has killed nearly 850 people since 1968 in a bloody campaign for an independent Basque state in northern Spain and south-western France. It is listed as a terrorist organisation by Spain, the United States and the European Union.
In a note issued on Sunday, ETA vowed to continue its attacks and said peace would not return to the northern Spanish region until the departure of "occupation forces" including the Basque region's autonomous police force, the Ertzaintza.