ETA looks in another direction

Spain

SINCE the Basque separatist terror group ETA killed its first victim, 22-month-old Begoña Urroz, in San Sebastian in June 1960 the organisation has murdered nearly 1,000 people. With its inexperienced leadership, ETA is today weakened and depleted but as Portuguese police discovered on February 5, it still thinks big.

SINCE the Basque separatist terror group ETA killed its first victim, 22-month-old Begoña Urroz, in San Sebastian in June 1960 the organisation has murdered nearly 1,000 people. With its inexperienced leadership, ETA is today weakened and depleted but as Portuguese police discovered on February 5, it still thinks big.

Searching a rented villa in Avarela, near Obidos, 86 kilometres north of Lisbon, they discovered a ton and a half of explosives, bomb-making equipment and firearms.  They were alerted the previous day by an Avarela resident, a Policia de Seguridad Preventiva officer, who said the tenants had been absent for three days although the doors and windows were open and the lights left on.  Both men spoke Spanish and drove a Citroen Berlingo.

Four days earlier on February 1, the same vehicle ignored a routine traffic control in Obidos.  Police gave chase and later found the abandoned van bogged down in mud; inside were spades, pickaxes, clothing and two detonators.  The Portuguese Guardia Nacional Republicana, equivalent to the Guardia Civil, went to the Avarela villa and found a bomb-making factory.

The tenants were identified as Andoni Zengotiabengoa Fernandez and Oier Gomez Mielgo, already wanted by the Spanish police.  Presumably they were complying with the ETA leadership’s orders to centre operations in Portugal now that close cooperation between the Spanish and French police has compromised their habitual boltholes in France.  The Avarela house confirmed suspicions that ETA possessed a hideout over the border after the Guardia Civil stopped an Iveco van with false French plates on January 9 in Bermillo de Sayago (Zamora), 20 kilometres from the Portuguese border.  Its driver, Garikoitz Garcia Arrieta fled in the officers’ patrol car after, it is rumoured, shutting them inside the Iveco as they inspected its interior.

Garcia Arrieta was detained soon afterwards by the Portuguese police in Torre de Moncorvo and his arrest was followed by that of Iratxe Yañez Ortiz de Barron – one of ETA’s “most wanted” – who was escorting Garcia Arrieta in another car.  The Iveco contained 30 sensors for limpet bombs and 25 timing devices for car bombs as well as two empty gas canisters, meant to be filled with explosives, plus a “Grozni cannon” – a sawn-off canister fitted with a barrel for launching them.

As well as these two intercepted vans, others must have travelled crossed Spain from France without detection and more Etarras than Andoni Zengotiabengoa Fernandez and Oier Gomez Mielgo would have been involved.    Not only identity documents belonging to the former’s brother Luis Maria found in the Iveco van in January back this theory.  On January 31 neighbours assumed there was a party at the Avarela villa because it was lit up with many people coming and going, suggesting further Etarra presence in the area.

The Aravela property was let in December through an agency but police believe that ETA established its Portuguese base approximately two years ago and since then has set up a communications centre, not necessarily in Avarela.  Significantly, as well as two laptops police found three mobile phones at the villa, labelled “Portugal”, “Madrid” and “Cadiz” together with maps of Cadiz and Madrid, the latter with potential targets marked with crosses.  There was another of the Coimbra region where Iratxe Yañez told police she was heading to see her boyfriend.

ETA has lost nearly three tons of explosives in the last six months.  Does it have more?  Assuming that it does, will the latest blow to its infrastructure and supply lines exhaust its operational ability? Spain and Portugal have now been collaborating in the fight against ETA since October 2007 and what promised to be a safe haven could be turning into a baited trap.

By Annie Maples