ETA surrenders arms to French police
bayonne (France) — Basque militant group ETA passed a list with the location of its arms caches to French authorities on Saturday, effectively ending an armed separatist campaign after almost half a century.
ETA, which killed more than 850 people in its attempt to carve out an independent state in northern Spain and southwest France, declared a ceasefire in 2011 but had not surrendered its remaining arms.
Founded in 1959 out of anger among Basques at political and cultural repression under General Francisco Franco, ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna — Basque Country and Freedom) gained notoriety as one of Europe’s most intractable separatist groups.
Saturday’s handover, via intermediaries, of its weapons in the French city of Bayonne will not mean the end of the group as a political entity, but will end an era of political violence in Western Europe.
It comes just as democraticallydriven nationalism is stirring across Europe, with Scotland and the Spanish region of Catalonia seeking referendums on independence, while Sinn Fein has urged a vote on taking Northern Ireland out of Britain.
ETA said in a letter to the BBC published on Friday it had handed over its weapons and explosives to civilian go-betweens who would deliver them to authorities.
Authorities received a list with the locations of 12 weapons caches, Ram Manikkalingam, the chairman of the International Verification Commission (IVC), told reporters in Bayonne. The IVC was set up in 2011 to verify ETA’s declaration of a definitive end to its violence.
The weapons caches could include about 130 handguns and two tonnes of explosives, French antiterrorism experts say.
It is not yet clear if the process will receive the backing of the Spanish and French governments.
However, 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,” Borja Semper said outside the legislature in VitoriaGasteiz. “What remains to be done is to wipe out the hatred that ETA embedded in a large part of Basque society.”
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 as possible murder weapons used in unresolved cases. ETA’s first known victim was a se- cret police chief in San Sebastian in 1968 and its last a French policemen shot in 2010.
It chose not to disarm when it called its truce, but has been weakened in the past decade after hundreds of its members were arrested and weapons seized in joint Spanish and French operations.
Popular revulsion at the scale of violent attacks carried out by Islamic militants had also played a part, Paddy Woodworth, who has written in depth about ETA, said. —