Eta apology for Basque terror that killed 800

ETA, the Basque militant group, yesterday apologised to the victims of its five-decade campaign of terror in which more than 800 people were killed.

“We are truly sorry,” the organisation said in a statement to relatives of those killed, injured and kidnapped, as well as those who were forced to flee Spain’s Basque region before the organisation declared an end to violence in 2011.

“Eta recognises the direct responsibility it has for that pain, and wishes to declare that none of all this should ever have happened, or not over such a long period of time”, read the statement published in Gara, the Basque newspaper.

Reaction to the apology across Spain has been mixed.

The government said it was “good that the terrorist group asks its victims for forgiveness because the victims, their memory and dignity, have been decisive in Eta’s defeat”.

However Mari Mar Blanco, of the Foundation of Terrorism Victims, said: “It is late in coming and by no means meets our expectations.”

Eta began its campaign of violence in the Sixties when General Franco’s regime held the whole of Spain in a vice of repression. The majority of those Eta killed, numbered at 829, died after 1975.