A trial started in Madrid yesterday of four ETA suspects accused of kidnapping a rightwing Popular Party activist and holding him captive for 18 months. Mr Jose Antonio Ortega Lara was abducted from his home in Burgos on January 17th, 1996, and rescued by police last July. He had been held in a hole dug in the floor of an industrial plant in the Basque region of Guipuzcoa.
Prosecutors are demanding 32 years in prison for the four suspects, one of whom admitted to the court that ETA had targeted Mr Ortega Lara because of his party activities and occupation as a prison guard. He will not be testifying at the trial for health reasons.
In retaliation for the freeing of Mr Ortega Lara, ETA seized another Popular Party member, the local councillor Miguel Angel Blanco, whose murder two days later outraged opinion across Spain.
In a separate development, 11 suspected members of an ETA commando unit have been remanded in custody on the orders of a judge, legal sources said.
The suspects were picked up last Friday in several places in the Basque Country in a vast police swoop against the "Vizcaya" unit, whose presumed leader, Inaxi Zeberio, was killed in a shoot-out. The judge, Mr Baltasar Garzon, finished interrogating detainees on Tuesday night.
Two other suspected ETA members arrested in the swoop were hospitalised. One fractured a rib trying to escape during the police assault on the apartment. The other was a heavily pregnant woman about to give birth.
Police said they dismantled the unit as it had just been reorganised and was planning new attacks. Documents seized by investigators revealed that its members had been gathering information on more than 600 potential targets, including many conservative politicians.