Recurring ETA attacks baffle police

By Vaiju Naravane

PARIS, DEC. 21. The killing of a Spanish police officer in Barcelona on Wednesday by suspected members of the Basque separatist organisation ETA is the third such attack in a month.

Police in Spain are baffled by the ETA's continued ``successes'' in evading detection and launching terrorist attacks. ``Almost all of ETA's terrorist leadership is behind bars or dead. But the organisation has used the 14-month ceasefire it declared in 1998 to recruit young members and to regroup.

There is a permanent underground ETA network in Catalonia'', an Interior Ministry official said.

Last Thursday, a municipal councillor belonging to the Spanish Prime Minister, Mr. Jose Maria Aznar's Popular Party was killed.

A former Socialist minister was killed on Nov. 22. Wednesday's attack took place in the centre of the Catalonian capital Barcelona.

Juan Miguel Gervilla Valladolid, a 38-year-old police officer and father of two, was shot in the head and chest as he approached two men pushing a red car just after 7 a.m. Ms Julia Garcia Valdecasas, the Central Government's representative in Barcelona, said, ``The policeman was killed because he surprised the two terrorists. His action has probably saved the lives of scores of others''.

Police bomb disposal experts later found the abandoned car to contain 6 kgs of explosives hidden in the boot.

They said they exploded the device but took care not to damage the car so that it would reveal clues to the identity of the two men.

Police theorise that the two men were preparing to install a remote-controlled device on the bomb so that it could be exploded at a moment when an ``important personality'' was in the vicinity of the car. The Catalan Government declared Thursday a day of mourning and cancelled all public ceremonies.

The policeman died very close to where ETA exploded a bomb on Nov. 2, injuring a police officer and security guard.

An increasing number of Spanish people are tired of the senseless killings unleashed by the ETA. Over one million persons demonstrated after the killing of a former Socialist minister on Nov. 22.

The Basque country, like all of Spain's provinces, enjoys almost total autonomy and police believe that support for the ETA within the region is on the wane. The ETA is demanding an independent Basque homeland and the withdrawal of Spanish forces from the region.

It wants the French Basque country to be part of this independent homeland. It also wants all Basque political prisoners to be regrouped in the Basque region. At the moment they are scattered across the country and in jails as far flung as the Canary Islands. Mr. Aznar, the right wing Prime Minister, has refused to accede to these demands.

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Section  : International
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