Basque militants ETA to disarm, ending decades of conflict

World
Europe

Basque militant group ETA is to surrender its weapons to authorities on Saturday, drawing a line under more than four decades of armed struggle that gained it notoriety as one of Europe's most intractable separatist movements.

The orchestrated handover in the French city of Bayonne will not dissolve the group, which declared a ceasefire in 2011 after killing more than 850 people during a campaign for an independent state in northern Spain and southwest France.

A woman walks past a mural in favor of imprisoned ETA members, reading "Basque Prisoners and Refugees, Home" in the Basque town of Amorebieta, northern Spain on April 6, 2017. /CFP Photo

Anger among Basques at political and cultural repression under General Francisco Franco led to the founding of ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna – Basque Country and Freedom) in 1959.

Following Spain's return to democracy in the 1970s, the Basque region gained more autonomy and the group's continued bombings and assassinations caused public support to wane.

ETA said in a letter to the BBC it had handed over its weapons and explosives to civilian go-betweens who will deliver them to authorities on Saturday.

But it is not clear how the process will be carried out or if it will receive the backing of the Spanish and French governments.

Youths prepare a banner, which reads "Artisans of Peace," on the eve of a demonstration to mark the handover of arms and explosives by civilian middlemen collected from the Basque militant separatist group ETA in Bayonne, France on April 7, 2017. /CFP Photo

The Basque parliamentary spokesman for Spain's ruling People's Party, which has refused to negotiate with ETA and called for its full dissolution, said the handover was a final surrender after six years of broken promises.

"The ETA we've known up to now has gone forever," said Borja Semper outside the legislature in Vitoria-Gasteiz. "What remains to be done is to wipe out the hatred that ETA embedded in a large part of Basque society."

The group's surrendered arms may yet come to embody that challenge.

A government source said Madrid did not believe the group would hand over all its arms, while Spain's state prosecutor has asked the High Court to examine those surrendered for murder weapons used in unresolved cases.

The Spanish government dismissed ETA's disarmament as a unilateral affair and bluntly warned that the group – which it denounces as a terror organization – could expect "nothing" in return.

Basque Popular Party's President Alfonso Alonso (L2) greets President of the Terrorism Victims Foundation Mari Mar Blanco (R2) during a Popular Party political rally in the northern Spanish city of Vitoria on April 7, 2017. /CFP Photo

"It will not reap any political advantage or profit," said Inigo Mendez de Vigo, Spain's culture minister and its government spokesman.

"May it disarm, may it dissolve, may it ask forgiveness and help to clear up the crimes which have not been resolved," he said.

EU parliament member Maite Pagazaurtundua, whose brother was killed in an ETA attack, put her weight behind a petition "against impunity" for the separatist group which gathered over 15,000 signatures within 24 hours.

ETA weapons 'handed to civil society' in France

ETA has handed over the weapons to members of "civil society" in France, one of them told AFP.

"We have the political and technical responsibility for ETA's disarmament, and it has been done," Txetx Etcheverry, a Basque environmentalist, said Friday.

"ETA has handed over its weapons to civil society. They are on French soil," he said.

Etcheverry gave no other details about the purported arms transfer or the contents of the arsenal itself, saying they were "confidential."

Two masked people hold the Basque separatist group ETA's flag on the sidelines of the Basque Youth sessions in Cambo-les-Bains in southwestern France on April 22, 2000. /CFP Photo

The separatist group is thought to have given French authorities information on the location of arms stashes, according to sources in Spain.

Analysts say ETA's arsenal is estimated at 130 handguns and two tons of explosives.

Violent Past

ETA's first known victim was a secret police chief killed in San Sebastian in 1968. Its last was a French policemen the group shot in 2010.

A year later it chose not to disarm when it called its truce, but has been severely weakened in the past decade after hundreds of its members were arrested in joint Spanish and French operations and weapons were seized.

In a symbolic gesture in 2014, ETA released a video showing masked members giving up a limited weapons cache to verifiers.

The group's first revolutionary gesture was to fly the banned "ikurrina," the red and green Basque flag, before the campaign escalated in the 1960s into violence that was brutally reciprocated by the Franco regime.

In 1973, ETA targeted Franco's heir apparent Luis Carrero Blanco by digging a tunnel under the road that he drove down daily to attend Mass. They packed the tunnel with explosives and blasted Blanco's car over a five-storey building, killing him instantly.

The scene of the blast that killed Luis Carrero Blanco in Madrid, Spain on December 20, 1973. /CFP Photo

The assassination changed the course of history, as the removal of Franco's successor led to the exiled king reclaiming the throne and Spain's progress to a constitutional monarchy.

At the peak of the violence, attacks including a 1987 car bomb at a Barcelona supermarket, which killed 21 including a pregnant woman and two children, horrified Spaniards and drew international outrage.

ETA called a permanent ceasefire in March 2006, but it was shattered by a massive bomb attack at a parking lot at Madrid airport that December which killed two Ecuadorian immigrants.

(Sources: Reuters, AFP)