Eta leader arrested

Two of Spain’s most wanted alleged terrorists and at least 16 other suspected members of the armed Basque separatist group Eta were captured today in a vast French-Spanish police operation, authorities said.

Mikel Albizu Iriarte, the suspected leader of Eta’s political wing since 1993, and his partner Soledad Iparraguirre were arrested near Pau in southwestern France, French investigators and Spanish authorities said.

The pair were with their daughter. Both aged 43, they had been on the run since 1993.

They had false papers and refused to answer questions but were identified by police agents and by their fingerprints.

Mikel Albizu, who uses the alias Mikel Antza, is thought to have taken over as a top leader after police devastated Eta in 1992 by arresting most of its senior members.

He has not been accused of having participated in attacks but was allegedly part of the group’s so-called executive committee and made the group’s decisions together with Ignacio Gracia Arregui, a former leader of Eta’s military wing arrested in September 2000 in France.

Albizu escaped another police raid last April that netted an Eta logistics chief, Feliz Ignacio Esparza.

Albizu’s partner Iparraguirre, who uses the alias “Amboto,” is considered one of Eta’s leading female members.

She comes from a family of Eta militants and became active after her boyfriend was killed in a police raid when she was 20.

She allegedly participated in dozens of attacks from 1984 through 1992 that together killed 15 people and injured more than 20 injured.

French authorities said all but one of the 16 other suspected Eta members were arrested in towns between Pau and Bayonne in southwest France.

The other suspect arrested in the northern Spanish city of Burgos is thought to have planted bombs for ETA at power installations in September. His wife was among those detained in France.

“The operation is very important,” said Spanish Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso.

“No less than seven homes have been searched and police have seized plenty of documentation, weapons and explosives, in important quantities.”

“The arrests are part of an excellent collaboration between Spain and France in anti-terrorism policies,” the minister added. His ministry put the number of suspects in custody at 21.

The discrepancy with the French figure of 18 could not immediately be explained.

Some 140 police agents took part in the raids. They seized rocket launchers, assault rifles, munitions, explosives, cash and documents, French authorities said.