Top Basque leader in custody
A young gunman arrested this week turns out to be the head of the Basque separatist group ETA — the first member of an uncompromising and ultra-violent new generation to lead the organization, Spanish officials said Wednesday.
Police said they were preparing for retaliation from ETA over the arrest of 35-year-old Mikel de Garikoitz Aspiazu, whose alias is Txeroki, or Cherokee in Basque.
Spanish authorities previously said Aspiazu was in charge of ETA’s commando units, which carry out attacks. But Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said in an interview with Cadena Ser radio that Aspiazu was actually ETA’s top leader, in charge of overall strategy. He did not say how or when authorities had discovered that he held that role.
Spanish officials have described Aspiazu as the most-wanted member of ETA and a potent symbol of a new generation of ETA members: young and extremely violent, disinclined to peace negotiations and with little to no ideological grounding, unlike founders and older members of a group that ostensibly espouses Marxism.
ADVERTISEMENT
ETA has killed more than 800 people since the late 1960s in its battle to create an independent homeland in northern Spain and southwest France for Basques, a people with their own language and culture. The most radical Basque separatists say they suffer repression at the hands of the Spanish government.
