SPAIN: Hemmed In, ETA Steps Up Pressure

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

MADRID, Aug 6 2007 (IPS) - Although greatly weakened, the Basque separatist group ETA has stepped up its pressure on businesses in that northern Spanish region with a view to raising funds through extortion, while it has become increasingly radical in its political demands and is preparing a new attack, according to the police.

Meanwhile, it is burying any chance of talks with the Spanish government.

The possibility of dialogue has been laid to rest because of two basic reasons. First, because ETA’s demands for independence for and unity among the three provinces that make up the Basque Country – Spain’s Navarra province and three French territories – clash with the firm positions taken by Madrid and Paris, based on their respective constitutions.

And second, because the Spanish government of socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero said it would not return to talks with ETA unless the group previously agreed to give up violence once and for all.

Contacts between the two sides broke off after a Dec. 30 bombing at Madrid’s Barajas airport that destroyed a parking ramp and killed two Ecuadorian immigrants.

ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna, or Basque Fatherland and Freedom in the Basque language) is opposed by the majority of people in the Basque region, who have made that clear over and over again in surveys and elections.

It was reported over the weekend that around 2,000 businesses in the Basque region received letters from ETA demanding the payment of a “revolutionary tax” of up to 400,000 euros (520,000 dollars).

If they fail to pay up, ETA warns that it could “decide on actions against their persons or their assets.”

“Living in the Basque Country, with my family there, my children and my grandchildren, can I risk their safety?” a Basque businessman who for years has been paying in response to ETA’s regular extortion campaigns remarked to IPS.

“I have no option but to pay, with the hope that someday this problem will come to an end,” he added, on the condition of anonymity.

Rodolfo Ares, a Basque Country official with the governing PSOE socialist party, described ETA’s campaign as “mafioso behaviour” and urged the targeted businesses not to pay up and to hand the letters over to the police to help dismantle the group.

Justice Minister Mariano Fernández Bermejo also called on the businesses to report the “blackmail” and refuse to pay. However, he did not say that giving in and paying was illegal.

So far this year, ETA has lost the installations where it produced forged documents in France, and its logistics chief, Juan Cruz Maiza, was arrested.

The police are working on deciphering a large number of encrypted documents seized from Cruz Maiza, which they believe will lead them to other members of ETA, and to locations where weapons and forged documents are stashed.

The “commandos” organised in France to commit terrorist attacks in Spain were also arrested, shortly after they entered this country.

A source with the police told IPS that the arrests were the result of continued close cooperation with French intelligence bodies and police to crack down on the terrorist group.

A total of 142 members of ETA were arrested in 2004, 87 in 2005, 43 in 2006 and 74 so far this year. The Madrid newspaper El País reported that the Spanish and French security forces have seized 4,000 kg of explosives and 650 firearms from ETA since January.

According to the police, because of its growing weakness and to make its voice heard once again, ETA is preparing a new bomb attack and is planning a leadership shake-up in its political arm, the banned radical Basque party Batasuna, on the argument that its current leaders gave in to the Spanish government when they engaged in negotiations last year.

When asked whether the December 2006 bombing did not demonstrate that ETA still has a well-organised structure, the police source said it did not require a major organisational capacity to park a car bomb and detonate it by remote control.

“Keep in mind that in the latest attacks committed by ETA in the last few years, the group’s members did not directly take part, but planted explosives and detonated them from afar, which is easy given today’s technologies,” he said.

He added that the security forces and especially their intelligence bodies are on the alert but are “encouraged by the success of our work.”