ETA leader among 3 held in France

THE leader of the armed Basque group ETA was arrested in France yesterday, officials said, in another setback for the separatists, who have seen five of their commanders taken into custody in the last two years.

ETA chief Ibon Gogeascoechea and two other separatist suspects were arrested in a joint French- Spanish police operation in Cahan village, France, after a long surveillance operation on a cottage rented using false identity papers, Spanish Interior Minister Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba said.

“We understand one of those detained is the maximum leader of ETA at this moment,” he said.

The two other suspects were part of an ETA“commando unit” preparing “to enter Spain almost certainly with the worst of intentions,” Rubalcaba said.

French judicial sources confirmed the arrests and said the suspects had been in the house for a week, planning to leave it yesterday.

Gogeascoechea, 54, is wanted for allegedly helping to place 12 explosive devices around the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, northern Spain, in 1997 on the eve of the gallery’s inauguration by the king of Spain. The plot was discovered before the bombs exploded, but Gogeascoechea’s brother, Eneko, shot dead a Basque regional policeman there.