Global Secret and Intelligence Services II E-Book

Heinz Duthel

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Seitenzahl: 617

Beschreibung

Global Secret and Intelligence Services II Hidden Systems that deliver Unforgettable Customer Service Global Secret and Intelligence Services II Hidden Systems that deliver Unforgettable Customer Service First Edition 2006 Second Edition 2009 Third Edition 2014 Updated: UUTYG/TT5443 Note: Because of some special contents of this publication, some pages are in French, German and Italien The DEA in popular culture * The DEA.org (The Drug Enjoying Americans), a drug information site. * Gary Oldman played a corrupt DEA Agent in The Professional. * Luis Guzman and Don Cheadle play two DEA agents in the movie Traffic. * Vin Diesel plays a DEA agent in the movie A Man Apart. * Max Payne is a DEA agent in the video game series Max Payne. In the game, Max battles addicts of a fictional designer drug called Valkyr. * David Duchovny played a transvestite DEA agent, Denise/Dennis Bryson on the series, Twin Peaks. * Mary-Louise Parker finds out that her boyfriend is a DEA agent on the Showtime series "Weeds"

Leseprobe

For my children

An intelligence agency is a governmental agency that is devoted to the information gathering (known in the context as "intelligence") for purposes of national security and defense. Means of information gathering may include espionage, communication interception, cryptanalysis, cooperation with other institutions, and evaluation of public sources. The assembly and propagation of this information is known as intelligence analysis.

Intelligence agencies can provide the following services for their national governments.

* provide analysis in areas relevant to national security;

* give early warning of impending crises;

* serve national and international crisis management by helping to discern the intentions of current or potential opponents;

* inform national defense planning and military operations;

* protect secrets, both of their own sources and activities, and those of other state agencies; and

* may act covertly to influence the outcome of events in favor of national interests

Intelligence agencies are also involved in defensive activities such as counter-espionage or counterterrorism.

Some agencies are accused of being involved in assassination, arms sales, coups d'état, and the placement of misinformation (propaganda) as well as other covert operations, in order to support their own or their governments' interests.

Intelligence agencies

The following is a partial list of current intelligence agencies.

Contents

Secret CIA prisons in Europe -

* 1 Agencies by country

- 1.1 Albania

- 1.2 Argentina

- 1.3 Australia

- 1.4 Austria

- 1.5 Azerbaijan

- 1.6 Belarus

- 1.7 Belgium

- 1.8 Bermuda

- 1.9 Bosnia and Herzegovina

- 1.10 Brazil

- 1.11 Bulgaria

- 1.12 Canada

- 1.13 China, People's Republic of

- 1.14 China, Republic of

- 1.15 Colombia

- 1.16 Croatia

- 1.17 Cuba

- 1.18 Czech Republic

- 1.19 Denmark

- 1.20 Dominican Republic

- 1.21 Egypt

- 1.22 Estonia

- 1.23 Finland

- 1.24 France

- 1.25 Germany

- 1.26 Greece

- 1.27 Hungary

- 1.28 India

- 1.29 Indonesia

- 1.30 Iran

- 1.31 Iraq

- 1.32 Ireland, Republic of

- 1.33 Israel

- 1.34 Italy

- 1.35 Japan

- 1.36 Jordan

- 1.37 South Korea

- 1.38 Libya

- 1.39 Luxembourg

- 1.40 Republic of Macedonia

- 1.41 Malaysia

- 1.42 Maldives

- 1.43 Man, Isle of

- 1.44 Mexico

- 1.45 Moldova

- 1.46 Morocco

- 1.47 Netherlands

- 1.48 New Zealand

- 1.49 Nigeria

- 1.50 Norway

- 1.51 Pakistan

- 1.52 Philippines

- 1.53 Poland

- 1.54 Portugal

- 1.55 Romania

- 1.56 Russian Federation

- 1.57 Saudi Arabia

- 1.58 Serbia

- 1.59 Singapore

- 1.60 Slovakia

- 1.61 Slovenia

- 1.62 South Africa

- 1.63 Spain

- 1.64 Sweden

- 1.65 Switzerland

- 1.66 Syria

- 1.67 Taiwan

- 1.68 Thailand

- 1.69 Turkey

- 1.70 Turkmenistan

- 1.71 Ukraine

- 1.72 United Kingdom

- 1.73 United States

- 1.74 Venezuela

- 1.75 Vietnam

- 1.76 Zimbabwe

The DEA in popular culture

* The DEA.org (The Drug Enjoying Americans), a drug information site.

* Gary Oldman played a corrupt DEA Agent in The Professional.

* Luis Guzman and Don Cheadle play two DEA agents in the movie Traffic.

* Vin Diesel plays a DEA agent in the movie A Man Apart.

* Max Payne is a DEA agent in the video game series Max Payne. In the game, Max battles addicts of a fictional designer drug called Valkyr.

* David Duchovny played a transvestite DEA agent, Denise/Dennis Bryson on the series, Twin Peaks.

* Mary-Louise Parker finds out that her boyfriend is a DEA agent on the Showtime series "Weeds"

Nivel Central

Cra 28 No. 17 a 00 (Paloquemao)

(1) 4088000 – 2086060

Bogotá, Colombia

DAS Website: http://www.das.gov.co

EL COMUNERO (In German)

http://www.humanrights.de/doc_de/archiWc/colombia/comuneroDe.htm

Croatia

* Protuobavještajna agencija (POA) (CounterIntelligence Agency)

* Obavještajna agencija (OA) (Intelligence Agency)

* Vojna sigurnosna agencija (VSA) (Military Security Agency)

Note: POA and OA awaiting merge into Središnja obavještajna agencija (SOA) (Central Intelligence Agency)

Obavještajna agencija

The Croatian Intelligence Agency (OA) was formed by the Republic of Croatia's Security Services Law (Zakon o sigurnosnim službama Republike Hrvatske - Klasa: 200-01/02-01/01). It was voted out by the Parlament on March 21, confirmed by president Mesic on March 26 (all laws/acts etc. relating to national security must also be confirmed by the president before they are legitimate, as required by the Constitution), and came into effect April 1st, 2002.

Duties

Its primary duties are stated in Chapter III., Paragraph a), Article 7, Subsection (1) of the aforementioned law and translate into English as follows:

(1) The Intelligence Agency (OA) will, through its actions abroad, gather, analyze, process and evaluate information of political, economical, security and military nature in relation to foreign countries, international government and non-government organizations, political, military and economic alliances, groups and individuals, especially all those with the intention, the possibility, or those believed to be plotting plans and covert actions to jeopardize (Croatian) national security.

Cuba

* Dirección General de Inteligencia (DGI) (General Directorate of Intelligence)

* Revolutionary Armed Forces Intelligence

General Intelligence Directorate

The Cuban General Intelligence Directorate (Dirección General de Inteligencia), or DGI, is the main state intelligence agency of the Cuban government. The DGI was founded in late 1961 by the Cuban Ministry of the Interior shortly after the revolutionaries took power in 1959. The DGI is responsible for all foreign intelligence collection and comprises six divisions divided into two categories, which are the Operational Divisions and the Support Divisions. Manuel "Redbeard" Piñeiro was the first director of the DGI in 1961 and his term lasted until 1964. The current head of the DGI is General Eduardo Delgado Rodriguez. Organizational makeup

The operational divisions comprise the following sections: The Political/Economic Intelligence Division is responsible for intelligence gathering on political figures unfriendly to the Cuban government and the foreign economic data and divided into 4 subsections:

* Eastern Europe

* North America

* Western Europe

* Africa-Asia-Latin America

The support divisions comprise the following sections:

* Technical Support Division: responsible for communications and falsified documentation in support of clandestine operatives

* Information Division: Raw intelligence gathering

* Preparation Division: Intelligence analysis

GB relationship

The relationship between the Soviet Union KGB and the Cuban DGI is complex and marked by times of extremely close cooperation and times of extreme competition. The Soviet Union saw the new revolutionary government in Cuba as excellent proxy agent in areas of the world where Soviet involvement was not popular on a local level. Nikolai Leninov, the KGB Chief in Mexico City, was one of the first Soviet officials to recognize Castro's potential as a revolutionary and urged the Soviet Union to strengthen ties with the new Cuban leader. Moscow saw Cuba as having far more appeal with new revolutionary movements, western intellectuals, and members of the New Left with Cuba's perceived David and Goliath Struggle against American Imperialism. Shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1963, Moscow invited 1,500 DGI agents, including Che Guevara, to the KGB's Moscow Center for an intensive training in intelligence operations.

Dismayed by Cuban debacles in Zaire and Bolivia as well as a perceived growing independence from

Moscow, the Soviets sought a more active role in shaping the DGI. In 1970 a team of KGB advisors led by General Viktor Semyonov was sent to the DGI to purge it of officers and agents considered anti-Soviet by the KGB. Manuel Piñeiro, becoming increasingly upset at the co-optation of the DGI by the Soviets, was removed during the 1970 purge and replaced with the pro-Soviet José Méndez Cominches as head of the DGI. Semyonov also took this opportunity to oversee a rapid expansion of the DGI's western operations. By 1971, 70% of the Cuban diplomats in London were actually DGI agents and proved invaluable to Moscow after the British government's mass expulsion of Soviet intelligence officers.

In 1962 the Soviet Union opened its largest foreign SIGINT (signal intelligence) site in Lourdes Cuba, approximately 30 miles (50km) outside of Havana. The Lourdes facility is reported to cover a 28 square mile (73km2) area with 1,000-1,500 Soviet and then Russian engineers, technicians, and military personnel working at the base. Those familiar with the Lourdes facility have confirmed that the base has multiple groups of tracking dishes and its own satellite system, with some groups used to intercept telephone calls, faxes, and computer communications, in general, and with other groups used to cover targeted telephones and devices. (1)

The Soviets also collaborated with the DGI to assist CIA defector Philip Agee in the publication of the Covert Action Information Bulletin. Funding for the bulletin came from the KGB, while the DGI ghost wrote many of the articles.

Operations abroad

Throughout its 40-year history the DGI has been actively involved in aiding revolutionary movements primarily in Central America, South America, Africa and the Middle East. There have also been allegations that Cuban DGI agents interrogated and tortured US POW's captured in Vietnam and held at the infamous Cu Loc (more commonly referred to as the Hanoi Hilton) POW camp in North Vietnam

Chile

Shortly after the election of Salvador Allende in 1971, the DGI worked extremely closely to strengthen Allende's position. The Cuban DGI station chief Luis de Ona even married Salvador Allende's daughter Beatrice. The DGI organized an international brigade that organized and coordinated the actions of thousands foreign leftist that had moved into Chile shortly after Allende's election. These individuals ranged from Cuban DGI agents, who were in charge of reorganizing Allende's security services, Soviet, Czech and North Korean military instructors and arms suppliers, to hardline Spanish and Portuguese Communist Party members.

Grenada

Shortly after a bloodless coup in Grenada, led by Maurice Bishop, the Cuban DGI sent advisors to the Island nation to assist Maurice Bishop. The DGI was also instrumental in convincing the Soviet Union to aid the island nation, aid which Grenadian General Hudson Austin called essential to the success of the Caribbean anti-imperial movement. The DGI coordinated 780 Cuban soldiers, engineers, and intelligence operatives.

Nicaragua

Beginning in 1967 the DGI had begun to establish ties with various Nicaraguan revolutionary organizations. The Soviets were upset at what they saw as Cuba upstaging the KGB in Nicaragua. By 1970 the DGI had managed to train hundreds of Sandinistan guerilla leaders and had vast influence over the organization. In 1969 the DGI had financed and organized an operation to free the jailed Sandinistan leader Carlos Fonseca from his prison in Costa Rica. Fonseca was captured shortly after the jail break, but after a plane carrying executives from the United Fruit Company was hijacked by the FSLN, he was freed and allowed to travel to Cuba.

DGI chief Manuel Piñeiro commented that "of all the countries in Latin America, the most active work being carried out by us is in Nicaragua".

The DGI, with Fidel Castro's personal blessing, also collaborated with the FSLN on the botched assassination attempt of Turner Shelton, the American ambassador in Managua and a close friend to the Somoza family. The FSLN managed to secure several hostages exchanging them for safe passage to Cuba and a one million dollar ransom. After the successful ousting of Anastasio Somoza, DGI involvement in the new Sandinistan government expanded rapidly. An early indication of the central role that the DGI would play in the Cuban-Nicaraguan relationship a meeting in Havana on July 27, 1979, at which diplomatic ties between the two countries were re-established after over 25 year. Julián López Díaz, a prominent DGI agent, was named Ambassador to Nicaragua. Cuban military and DGI advisors initially brought in during the Sandinistan insurgency, would swell to over 2,500 and operated at all levels of the new Nicaraguan government. Sandinista defector Alvaro Baldizón confirmed that Cuban influence in Nicaragua's Interior Ministry (MINT) was more extensive that was widely believed at the time and Cuban "advice" and "observations" were treated as though they were orders.

Puerto Rico

With the popular demise of U.S. radicals supported by the DGI, like the Weather Underground and Black Panthers, the DGI sought to aid the growing Puerto Rican separatist movement. Dr. Daniel James testified before a U.S. Senate Subcommittee that the DGI, working through Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, organized and trained the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN) in 1974. In October 1974, Ríos was arrested and charged with terrorist acts against American hotels in Puerto Rico. Authorities found a substantial amount of Cuban government documents and secret codes in his possession. Shortly after his release on bail he disappeared but was credited with the 1979 unification of Puerto Rico's five principal terrorist groups into the Cuban-directed National Revolutionary Command (CRN).

According to the former chief investigator of the U.S. Senate, Alfonso Tarabochia, the DGI began directing criminal activities in Puerto Rico and the eastern and midwestern United States as early as 1974. That June, the secretary general of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party, Juan Marí Bras, met in Havana with Fidel Castro to consolidate party solidarity.

Beginning in September 1974, the incidence of bombings by Puerto Rican extremists, particularly the FALN, escalated sharply. Targets included U.S. companies and public places. The FALN was responsible for a bombing that killed four and wounded dozens at the historic Fraunces Tavern in lower Manhattan on January 25, 1975. Later that year, Fidel Castro sponsored the First World Solidarity Conference for the Independence of Puerto Rico in Havana.

Ríos died in a shoot out with the FBI on Friday, September 23, 2005 in a rural village in the town of Hormiueros, Puerto Rico.

Camp Mantanzas (AKA "Punto Zero" or Point Zero)

Camp Mantanzas is a training facility operated by the DGI and is located outside Havana since early 1962. Famous because of their "Vietnamese tactics training". Many notorious groups and individuals have received or provided training to various revolutionary movements through out the world. Some of these include:

* The Eritrean Liberation Front he

Eritrean Liberation Front was the main secessionist movement in Eritrea which sought Eritrea's independence from Ethiopia during the 1960s and 1970s. It was founded in the early 1960s and soon came into violent conflict with the government, using guerrilla war tactics to continue the struggle. Though the movement posed great problems for the Ethiopian government, it failed to achieve independence for Eritrea. In the 1970s, a group of its members split the movement and formed the Eritrean People's Liberation Front, a more left-wing rebel movement. By the 1980s, the People's Liberation Front had replaced the original Eritrean Liberation Front as the main rebel group. When Eritrea did gain independence in the early 1990s, the People's Liberation Front changed into the People' Front for Democracy and Justice with the addition of former ELF members while the balance became a small terrorist group in the nether reaches of the Sudan. The ELF had an extraordinary meeting in 1995 in Gondar, Ethiopia which has shown the differencies of view between the founders of ELF (Ahmed Mohammed Nasser, Hiruy Tadla Bayru)and the new leaders (Siyoum Ogbamichael, Hussein Kelifah and Weldeyesus Ammar).

* The Colombian National Liberation Army (ELN)

Ejército de Liberación Nacional (usually abbreviated to ELN), or National Liberation Army, is a revolutionary, Marxist, insurgent guerrilla group that has been operating in several regions of Colombia since 1964. Less known than the FARC, it is estimated to be smaller, having between 3,500 to 5,000 guerrillas.

The US State Department considers ELN to be a Foreign Terrorist Organization due to its notorious reputation for ransom kidnappings and armed attacks on Colombia's infrastructure. In April 2004, the European Union added the ELN to its list of terrorist organizations for those actions and its breaches of humanitarian law. (1)

The ELN has also occasionally operated with the FARC-EP and it has also targeted civilians, according to a February 2005 report by the United Nation's High Commissioner for Human Rights: "During 2004, the FARC-EP and the ELN carried out a series of attacks against the civilian population, including several massacres of civilians and kidnappings by the FARC-EP. There were occasional joint actions by the FARC-EP and the ELN." (2)

The group was originally founded by Cuban-trained Fabio Vásquez Castaño who along with his brother and other relatives initially held important positions within the organization.

The outspoken Father Camilo Torres Restrepo (a well-known university professor of egalitarian and eventually Marxist leanings who was highly critical of Colombia's historically unfair income distribution, named after a revolutionary figure in Colombia's late colonial history), was attracted to the radical new ideas of liberation theology and joined the group with the intent of putting them into practice inside a revolutionary environment. Torres himself died shortly after joining the ELN during his first combat, but he remained as an important symbol both for the group as a whole and to other like-minded priests who gradually followed his example, most from relatively low positions in the Catholic Church's structure.

After suffering both internal crisis and military defeat in the early 1970s, it was Father Manuel Pérez alias "El Cura Pérez" ("Pérez the Priest") from Spain, who eventually assumed joint-leadership of the group along with current leader Nicolás Rodríguez Bautista, alias "Gabino", and presided over the ELN as one of its most recognized figures from the late 1970s until he died of hepatitis in 1998.

It has been considered that Manuel Pérez had a large role in giving ultimate shape to the ELN's ideology, which has traditionally been considered as a mixture of Cuban revolutionary theory with extreme liberation theology, calling for a Christian and Communist solution to Colombia's problems of corruption, poverty and political exclusion, through the use of guerrilla activity, conventional warfare and also what has been termed as terrorist action. Observers have commented that, since the death of Manuel Pérez, the movement may arguably have begun to slowly lose focus regarding many of its earlier concerns, such as the necessary unity of revolutionary activity with Christian and social action, in order to win over the population to their cause.

The ELN guerrillas were seriously crippled by the Anorí operation carried out by the Colombian military from 1973 to 1974, but managed to reconstitute themselves and escape destruction, in part due to the government of Alfonso López Michelsen allowing them to escape encirclement, hoping to initiate a peace process with the group. The ELN survived and managed to sustain itself through the extortion of private and foreign oil companies, including several of German origin and large-scale kidnapping, and, to a lesser degree, with indirect profits from the drug trade such as the taxation of crops.

One such kidnapping victim was Glen Heggstad, a lone U.S. motorcycle rider touring South America. He was taken hostage while on the road from Bogotá to Medellín in November, 2001 and held for several months. He has since written a book detailing his ordeal titled Two Wheels Through Terror.

The ELN did not participate in the peace process that the administration of Andrés Pastrana Arango attempted during 1998 to 2002 with the FARC, though it did engage in exploratory talks, kept contacts and discussed the possibility of eventually joining a peace initiative. A government initiative in favor of granting a demilitarized zone in the south of the Bolívar Department to the ELN was stalled and eventually prevented, due to pressure from some of the location's inhabitants and from the AUC paramilitaries operating in the region.

Some sectors within the ELN have apparently been hit hard both by the AUC right wing paramilitaries and, more recently, the different military offensives initiated under the Uribe administration, which has been the basis for reductions in estimates of its currently available manpower.

2002 to 2006 Government-ELN Talks

Early Contacts

Previous contacts continued during the early days of the Álvaro Uribe Vélez government but eventually were severed, neither party being fully trusting of the other. Only in mid-2004 the ELN and the government began to make a series of moves that, with the announced mediation of the Vicente Fox government of Mexico, lead to another round of exploratory talks.

On July 24, 2004 the ELN apparently adbucted Misael Vacca Ramírez, the Catholic Bishop of Yopal, though their reasons were not clarified. The kidnappers said that Ramírez would be released with a message, but "Francisco Galán", a senior jailed ELN commander who has often acted as an intermediary between the government and the ELN's high command, said he did not know whether the group was responsible. The Bishop was subsequently released by ELN members, in good health, on July 27th, after his kidnapping had been condemned by Amnesty International and Pope John Paul II, among others. As far as is publicly known, he did not have any message to announce on behalf of the ELN.

Eventually, the ELN questioned Mexico's participation in the talks, arguing that it did not have confidence in the actions of a government which voted against Fidel Castro's Cuba during an United Nations vote. This led the Mexican government to end its participation.

Exploratory Talks in Cuba

In December 2005, the ELN and the Colombian government began a new round of exploratory talks in La Habana, Cuba, with the presence of the ELN's military commander "Antonio García", as well as "Francisco Galán" and "Ramiro Vargas". This was considered the direct result of three months of previous consultations with representatives of different sectors of public society through the figure of a "House of Peace" ("Casa de Paz" in Spanish).

Representatives from Norway, Spain and Switzerland joined both parties at the talks as observers.

The talks ended by December 22 and both parties agreed to meet again in January 2006. (3) After a series or preeliminary encounters, the next round of talks was later rescheduled for early-mid February. (4)

During the February talks, which continued to move at a slow pace, the government decided to formally suspend capture orders for "Antonio García" and "Ramiro Vargas", recognizing them as negotiators and, implictly, as political actors. The move was also joined by the creation of what was termed an alternative and complementary mechanism that could be used to deal with difficult issues and matters that concerned both parties, outside the main negotiating table. A formal negotiation process has yet to begin. (5)

On March 23, the ELN freed a Colombian soldier that it had kidnapped on February 25, delivering it to the International Committee of the Red Cross, saying that it was an unilateral sign of good will. (6)

The ELN's "Antonio García" is expected to visit Colombia from April 17 to April 28, participating in different meetings with representatives of several political, economic and social sectors. The third round of the exploratory talks would have originally taken place in La Habana, Cuba from May 2 to May 12. (7)

The third round of talks was later moved to late April, taking place from April 25 to April 28. Both parties reiterated their respect for the content and spirit of all previous agreements, and that they would continue working towards the design of a future peace process. The Colombian government and the ELN intend to study documents previously elaborated during the "House of Peace" stage, as well as documents from other participants and observers. (8) Both parties are expected to meet again after Colombia's May 28 presidential elections.

ELN Homepage: http://www.eln-voces.com

* The Basque Separatist Movement (ETA)

Euskadi Ta Askatasuna or ETA (Basque for "Basque Homeland and Freedom"; IPA pronunciation: (' - - ta)) is an armed Basque nationalist organization that seeks to create an independent socialist state for the Basque people in the Basque Country, separate from Spain and France. On March 22, 2006, the organization declared a permanent ceasefire stating it will commit itself "to promote a democratic process in the Basque Country in order to build a new framework within which our rights as a people are recognized, and guarantee the opportunity to develop all political options in the future."

ETA's motto is Bietan jarrai ("Keep up on both"). This refers to the two figures in the ETA symbol, the snake (a symbol of secrecy and astuteness) wrapped around an axe (representing strength). The organization was founded in 1959. It evolved rapidly from a group advocating traditional cultural ways, to an armed group fighting for independence.

ETA has focused primarily on two demands:

* That an independent socialist government be created in the Basque-inhabited areas of Spain and France,

* That imprisoned ETA members currently awaiting trial or serving prison sentences in Spain and France be released.

The Basques consider their culture distinct from those of their neighbours and they speak a language unlike any other in Europe. (1)

However, during the 1980s, the goals of the organisation started to shift. Four decades after the creation of ETA, the idea of creating a socialist state in the Basque Country had begun to seem utopian and impractical, and ETA moved to a more pragmatic stance. This was reflected in the 1995 manifesto "Democratic Alternative", which offered the cessation of all armed ETA activity if the Spanish-government would recognize the Basque people as having sovereignty over Basque territories and the right to self-determination. Self-determination would be achieved through a referendum on whether to remain a part of Spain.

The organization has adopted other tactical causes such as fighting against:

* Alleged drug traffickers as corruptors of Basque youth and police collaborators. (1).

* The nuclear power plant project at Lemoiz

* The Leizaran highway

Context

ETA forms part of what is known as the Basque National Liberation Movement (Movimiento de Liberación Nacional Vasco, MLNV in Spanish). This comprises several distinct organizations promoting a type of left Basque nationalism often referred to by the Basque-language term ezker abertzale or by the mixed Spanish and Basque izquierda abertzale (abertzale stands for patriot in Basque). These include ETA, Batasuna/Herri Batasuna/Euskal Herritarrok, and the associated youth group Haika (formed by Jarrai, Gazteriak, and Segi), the union Langile Abertzaleen Batzordeak (LAB), Gestoras pro Amnistía and others.

There are also some left-wing nationalist groups seeking Basque independence but clearly disapproving of violent methods, such as Aralar (2) (as of 2005, with a representative in the Basque Parliament, Aintzane Ezenarro) or the Navarran coalition Nafarroa Bai (3) (as of 2005, with a Spanish M.P., Uxue Barkos). In Basque, they could be called abertzale, but that wouldn't mean they support violence. In mainstream Spanish media, though, this term is generally applied only to ETA supporters.

Social support

The roots of ETA's support lie in attempts of the Spanish state under Francisco Franco to destroy Basque nationalism. Since Basque nationalists had sided with the Republican government in the Spanish Civil War, Franco restricted virtually any public expressions of Basque culture and banned all expressions of Basque nationalism, including public display of the nationalist flag, celebration of nationalist holidays, speaking the Basque language in public and teaching it in schools; even baptizing children with non-Spanish names was illegal. However, the recovery of the Basque industry was swift because of Franco's support attracted a massive rural exodus from Castile, Galicia, Andalusia and Extremadura, leading to further dilution of the Basque identity.

During the Franco era, ETA had considerable public support even beyond the Basque populace, reaching its peak after the 'Burgos Trials' of 1970, which drew international attention to the organization's cause and highlighted the repressive nature of the Franco regime, and their assassination of Almirante Luis Carrero Blanco in 1973 (Carrero Blanco was appointed by Franco as his successor in the rule of Spain). Spain's transition to democracy from 1975 on and ETA's progressive radicalization have resulted in a steady loss of support, which became especially apparent at the time of their 1997 kidnapping and countdown assassination of Miguel Ángel Blanco. Their loss of sympathizers has been reflected in an erosion of support for the political parties identified with the MLNV.

In recent years, ETA supporters represent a minority in the Basque region. A Euskobarómetro (4) poll (conducted by the Universidad del País Vasco) in the Basque Country in May 2004, found that a significant number of Basques supported some or all of ETA's goals. (33% favored Basque independence, 31% federalism, 32% autonomy, 2% centralism.) However, few supported their violent methods (87% agreed that "today in Euskadi it is possible to defend all political aspirations and objectives without the necessity of resorting to violence".) The poll did not cover Navarre, where Basque nationalism is weaker (around 25% of population) and the Basque areas of France where it is still weaker (around 15% of population are regionalist, not necessarily independentist).

Tactics

ETA's tactics include:

* Assassination and murder, especially by car bombs or a gunshot to the nape of the neck. Before bombings, ETA members often make a telephone call so that people can be evacuated, although these calls have sometimes given incorrect information, leading to increased casualties.

* Anonymous threats, often delivered in the Basque Country by placards or graffiti, and which have forced many people into hiding; an example was the harassment of Juan María Atutxa, member of the Basque Nationalist Party, and one-time head of the department Inner Affairs and Justice for the autonomous government of the Basque Country.

* Protection money, the so-called "revolutionary tax" paid by many businesses in the Basque Country and in the rest of Spain and enforced by the threat of assassination. In 2002 the judge Baltasar Garzón seized the herriko tabernas ("people's taverns", bars owned directly or indirectly by Herri Batasuna) which were reportedly collecting these "revolutionary taxes". This was seen by members of the Basque left as an attack on the social fabric underlying the independence movement.

* Kidnapping (often as a punishment for failing to pay protection money).

ETA operates mainly in Spain, particularly in the Basque Country, Navarre, and (to a lesser degree) Madrid, Barcelona, and the tourist areas of the Mediterranean coast of Spain. The overwhelming number of ETA's assassinations have historically targeted so-called "military targets" (which was traditionally limited to the military proper, the Spanish Civil Guard and the Spanish National Police). As the autonomous police (Basque Ertzaintza and Catalan Mossos d'Esquadra) took a greater role in antiterrorism, they were added by ETA to the "military targets". Beginning with the killing of Gregorio Ordóñez in 1995 this was expanded to include politicians of any non-Basque nationalist party, journalists and other civilians.

A police file, dating from 1996, indicated that ETA needs about 15 million pesetas (about 90,000 Euros) daily in order to finance its operations (citation needed). Although ETA used robbery as a means of financing in its early days, it has since been accused both of arms trafficking and of benefiting economically from its political counterpart Batasuna. Kidnapping and extortion are other key methods that the organization has used to obtain finances. ETA has also occasionally burgled or robbed storehouses of explosives. It has often maintained large caches of explosives, often over the French side of the Basque border rather than within the Spanish jurisdiction.

ETA victims have included, among others:

* Luis Carrero Blanco, president of the government under Franco (1973)

* Members (and relatives of members) of the army and the security forces of the Spanish state, including Guardia Civil, Policía Nacional, and police of the autonomous regions, such as the Ertzaintza (Basque police) or Mossos d'Esquadra (the police force of Catalonia).

* Parliamentarians, members of city councils, sympathizers and partisans of other parties, including the socialist PSOE (such as Fernando Buesa, killed February 22, 2000 in Vitoria and Ernest Lluch shot through the neck November 21, 2000 in Barcelona), the conservative Partido Popular (such as Miguel Ángel Blanco and Gregorio Ordóñez) or even conservative Basque nationalists such as (Navarrese fuerista Tomás Caballero, assassinated in 1998).

* Judges and lawyers

* Functionaries of the prison and judicial systems.

* Businessmen, such as Javier Ybarra.

* University professors, such as Francisco Tomás y Valiente, killed in 1996.

* Journalists, such as José Luis López de la Calle, killed in May 2000.

* Random civilians, including children.

Government Repression

Members of ETA have often taken refuge in southwestern France, especially the French Basque Country and Aquitaine. Although this used to be tolerated by the French government, especially during the Franco dictatorship when ETA members were often regarded as political refugees, the expansion of violence into France by Spanish government death squads (GAL) in the 1980s forced the French to reconsider their stance and they have since become extremely active against ETA, including fast-track transfers of detainees to Spanish tribunals. Also ETA carried out actions against French policemen and menaced some French judges and prosecutors. A number of ETA members have been captured on French soil; some are serving sentences in France and others have been extradited to Spain to stand trial.

Several ETA members were executed during the Franco era. During the post-Franco 1970s and the 1980s, ETA members and its suspected supporters were the target of right-wing violence and violence by government agents such as GAL, whose actions not only ETA and their supporters but such observers as the BBC have characterized as "state terrorism". (5)

ETA members frequently allege torture at the hands of the Guardia Civil (Civil Guard). While these claims are hard to verify, it should be noted that most convictions are based on confessions obtained while prisoners are held "incommunicado" without access to a private lawyer or other advocate and that these confessions are routinely repudiated during trials as having been extracted under torture. While there have been some successful prosecutions of torturers after long delays, the penalties are usually light and co-conspirators and enablers have rarely been sanctioned. From the US State Department report on Human Rights in Spain 1994, "In December 1993 the Supreme Court overturned the appeals of five former members of the Civil Guard convicted in 1990 of torturing the father of a suspected ETA member in 1981. The perpetrators received 6-month prison terms and 7 years on probation. Others implicated in the crime or its coverup received probation or reprimands".

ETA considers its prisoners political prisoners. Until 2003 (2), ETA consequently forbade them to ask penal authorities for progression to tercer grado, a regime allowing day or weekend furloughs, or parole. Before that date, progressing prisoners were expelled from the group.

The second arm of the Spanish Government's campaign against ETA has been to target its social support. This has taken the form of banning Herri Batasuna and its successor parties, imprisoning its leaders for not condeming ETA's armed struggle, closing Herri Batasuna's party pubs that served as a social locus for the Basque left, closing the newspaper Egin and imprisoning the editor of its investigative unit (who, perhaps coincidentally, led the investigation that brought down the head of the Guardia Civil, Enrique Galindo, for corruption). The Spanish Supreme Court and the tribunals in Europe have validated the actions of the government against ETA's support net. The pubs that were closed collected money for ETA and were in some cases used to store weapons. Many imprisoned members of HB or Jarrai had dual membership in ETA and its political branches, sentenced for assisting in ETA attacks or collecting ETA's blackmail.

Structure

ETA is organized into distinct talde ("groups"), whose objective is to conduct operations in a specific geographic zone; collectively, they are coordinated by the cúpula militar ("military cupola"). In addition, they maintain safe houses and zulo (caches of arms or explosives; the Basque word zulo literally means "hole." (6))

Among its members, ETA distinguishes between legales/legalak ("lawful ones"), those members who do not have police files, liberados ("liberated"), exiled to France and on ETA's payroll, prisoners, serving time scattered across Spain and France, and quemados ("burned out"), freed after having been imprisoned.

The internal organ of ETA is Zutabe ("Column").

Political support

The political party Batasuna, formerly known as Euskal Herritarrok and "Herri Batasuna", now banned as a terrorist organization, pursues the same political goals as ETA. It has generally received between 10 and 20% of the vote in the Basque areas of Spain.

Batasuna's political status has been a very controversial issue. It is considered by many, including the Spanish courts, to be the political wing of ETA, although the party itself denies that this is the case. The Spanish Cortes (parliament) began the process of declaring the party illegal in August 2002 by issuing a bill entitled the Ley de Partidos. Many strongly disputed this move, which they felt was too draconian or even unlawful: they alleged that any party could be made illegal almost by choice, just for not clearly stating their opposition to crime after a terrorist attack. Judge Baltasar Garzón suspended the activities of Batasuna in a parallel trial, investigating the relationship between Batasuna and ETA, and its headquarters were shut down by police. The Supreme Court of Spain finally declared Batasuna illegal on March 18, 2003. The court considered proven that Batasuna had several links with ETA and that it was, in fact, part of ETA. In line with that decision, Batasuna was listed as a terrorist organization by the United States in May 2003 and by all EU countries in June 2003.

A new party called Aukera Guztiak (All the Options) was formed for the elections to the Basque Parliament of April 2005. Its supporters claimed no heritage from Batasuna, asserting that their aim was to allow Basque citizens to freely express their political ideas, even those of independence, and their rights not to condemn some kind of violence more than other if they did not see it fit. Nevertheless, most of their members and certainly most of their leadership were former Batasuna supporters or affiliates, and the Spanish Supreme Court unanimously considered the party to be a sequel to Batasuna and declared a ban on it.

After Aukera Guztiak had been banned, and less than two weeks before the election, another political group born as a schism from Herri Batasuna, the Communist Party of the Basque Lands (EHAK/PCTV, Euskal Herrialdeetako Alderdi Komunista / Partido Comunista de las Tierras Vascas) made the announcement that they would offer the votes they obtained to the now banned Aukera Guztiak platform. They obtained 9 seats (12,44% of votes) at the Basque Parliament (7). As of September 2005, EHAK/PCTV is under investigation to discover whether or not their situation is legal.

During many years, Spanish politicians not related to Basque nationalism felt obliged to carry an escort with them to avoid ETA attacks. The last fatal ETA attack was in 2003; in 2005 ETA announced that it would no longer target Spanish politicians, but the Spanish government criticized this move, and continued to demand that ETA renounce violence entirely. In March 2006, ETA declared a "permanent ceasefire".

History

During Franco's dictatorship

ETA was founded by young nationalists, who were for a time affiliated with the PNV. Started in 1953 as a student discussion group at the University of Deusto in Bilbao, an offshoot of the PNV's youth group EGI, it was originally called EKIN, from the Basque-language verb meaning "to act"; the name had the meaning "get busy". (8), (9) On July 31, 1959 it reconstituted itself as ETA. Their split from the PNV was apparently because they considered the PNV too moderate in its opposition to Franco's dictatorship. They disagreed with the PNV's rejection of violent tactics and advocated a Basque resistance movement utilizing direct action. This was an era of wars of national liberation such as the anti-colonial war in Algeria.

In their platform, formed at their first assembly in Bayonne, France in 1962, ETA called for "historical regenerationism", considering Basque history as a process of construction of a nation. They declared that Basque nationality is defined by the Basque language, Euskara; this was in contrast to the PNV's definition of Basque nationality in terms of ethnicity. In contrast with the explicit Catholicism of the PNV, ETA defined itself as "aconfessional"--meaning ETA does not recognize a special state religion--although using Catholic doctrine to elaborate its social program. They called for socialism and for "independence for Euskadi, compatible with European federalism".

In 1965, ETA adopted a Marxist-Leninist position; its precise political line has varied with time, although they have always advocated some type of socialism.

In its early years, ETA's activity seems to have consisted mostly of theorizing and of protesting by destroying infrastructure and Spanish symbols and by hanging forbidden Basque flags.

It is not possible to say when ETA first began a policy of assassination, nor is it clear who committed the first assassinations identified with ETA. There are sources that say the first was the June 27, 1960 death of a 22- month-old child, Begoña Urroz Ibarrola, who died in a bombing in San Sebastián; other sources single out a failed 1961 attempt to derail a train carrying war veterans; others point to the unpremeditated June 7, 1968 killing of a guardia civil, José Pardines Arcay by

ETA member Txabi Etxebarrieta: the policeman had halted Etxebarrieta's car for a road check. Etxebarrieta was soon killed by the Spanish police, leading to retaliation in the form of the first ETA assassination with major repercussions, was that of Melitón Manzanas, chief of the secret police in San Sebastián and a suspected torturer. In 1970, several members of ETA were condemned to death in the Proceso de Burgos ("Trial of Burgos"), but international pressure resulted in commutation of the sentences, which, however, had by that time already been applied to some other members of ETA. The most consequential assassination performed by ETA during Franco's dictatorship was the December 1973 assassination by bomb in Madrid of admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, Franco's chosen successor and president of the government (a position roughly equivalent to being a prime minister). This killing, committed as a reprisal for the execution of Basque independentistas, was widely applauded by the Spanish opposition in exile and was seen by many as instrumental in the establishment of democracy: by denying Franco his chosen successor, it forced him to hand the reins of power back to the monarchy, which in turn established the current democratic state.

The former ETA member turned anti-Nationalist author Jon Juaristi contends that ETA's goal was not democratization but a spiral of violence.

During the transition

After Franco's death, during the Spanish transition to democracy ETA split into two separate organizations:

one faction became ETA political-military or ETA(pm), and another ETA military or ETA(m). The difference between the two factions was that one favored a double political and military strategy, while the other favored a purely military approach to the conflict, ignoring (for some time) the political scene and also focusing exclusively on military targets: policemen and members of the army.

During Spain's transition to democracy, both ETA(m) and ETA(pm) refused offers of amnesty, instead continuing and intensifying its violent struggle. The years 1978–80 were to prove ETA's most deadly, with 68, 76, and 91 fatalities, respectively. (Martinez-Herrera 2002)

During the Francoist dictatorship, ETA was able to take advantage of toleration by the French government, which allowed its members to move freely through French territory, believing that in this manner they were contributing to the end of Franco's regime. There is much controversy over the degree to which this policy of "sanctuary" continued even after the transition to democracy, but it is generally agreed that currently the French authorities collaborate closely with the Spanish government against ETA.

Already in the 80s, ETA(pm) accepted the Spanish government's offer of individual pardons to all ETA prisoners, even those who had committed violent crimes, who publicily abandoned the policy of violence. This caused a new division in ETA(pm) between the VI and VII assemblies. ETA VII accepted this pseudo-amnesty and integrated into the political party Euskadiko Ezkerra ("Left of the Basque Country").

ETA VI, after a brief period of independent activity, eventually integrated in ETA(m), possibly influencing ETA(m) into adopting even more radical and violent positions. With no factions existing anymore, ETA(m) revamped the original name of Euskadi Ta Askatasuna.

ETA performed their first car bomb assassination in Madrid in September 1985, resulting in one death and sixteen injuries; another bomb in July 1986 killed twelve members of the Guardia Civil and injured 50; on July 19, 1987 the Hipercor bombing was an attack in a shopping center in Barcelona, killing twenty one and injuring forty five; in the last case, several entire families were killed. ETA claimed in a communique that they had given advance warning of the Hipercor bomb, but that the police had declined to evacuate the area. The police claim that the warning came only few minutes before the bomb exploded.

In a "dirty war" against ETA, Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación (GAL, "Antiterrorist Liberation Groups"), a government-sponsored and supposedly counterterrorist organization active 1983–87 committed assassinations, kidnappings and torture, not only of ETA members but of civilians, some of whom turned out to have nothing to do with ETA. In 1997 a Spanish court convicted and imprisoned several individuals involved in GAL, not only mercenaries and low-level police officials but politicians up to the highest levels of the PSOE government of prime minister Felipe Gonzalez, including a minister of the interior. Although

González had been quoted as saying that the government would defend itself in the "sewers of the state" (las cloacas del estado), his role in GAL was never proven. No major cases of foul play on the part of the Spanish government after 1987 have been proven in court, although ETA supporters routinely claim human rights violations and torture by security forces; international human rights organizations like Amnesty International have backed very few of these claims. ETA's manuals had been found telling its members and supporters to claim routinely that they had been tortured while detained.

In 1986 Gesto por la Paz (known in English as Association for Peace in the Basque Country) was founded; they began to convene silent demonstrations in communities throughout the Basque Country the day after any violent killing, whether by ETA or by GAL. These were the first systematic demonstrations in the Basque Country against terrorist violence. Also in 1986, in Ordizia, ETA assassinated María Dolores Katarain, known as "Yoyes", the former director of ETA who had abandoned the armed struggle and rejoined civil society: they accused her of "desertion".

January 12, 1988 all Basque political parties except ETA-affiliated Herri Batasuna signed the Ajuria-Enea pact with the intent of ending ETA's violence. Weeks later on January 28, ETA announced a 60-day "ceasefire", later prolonged several times. Negotiations known as the Mesa de Argel ("Algiers Table") took place between the ETA representative Eugenio Etxebeste, ("Antxon") and the then PSOE government of Spain but no successful conclusion was reached, and ETA eventually resumed the use of violence.

During this period, the Spanish government had a policy referred to as "reinsertion", under which imprisoned ETA members whom the government believed had genuinely abandoned the armed struggle could be freed and allowed to rejoin society. Claiming a need to prevent ETA from coercively impeding this reinsertion, the PSOE government decided that imprisoned ETA members, who previously had all been imprisoned within the Basque Country, would instead be dispersed to prisons throughout Spain, some as far from their families as in the Salto del Negro prison in the Canary Islands. France has taken a similar approach. In the event, the only clear effect of this policy was to incite social protest, especially from nationalists and families of the prisoners, over the cruelty of separating family members from their loved ones and the supposed illegality of the policy itself. Much of the protest against this policy runs under the slogan "Euskal presoak - Euskal Herrira" (Basque prisoners to the Basque Country, by "Basque prisoners" only ETA members are meant).

During the ETA ceasefire of the late 1990s, the PSOE government brought back to the mainland the prisoners in the islands and Africa. Since the end of the ceasefire, ETA prisoners have still not been sent to overseas prisons. Some Basque authorities have established grants for the expenses of visiting families.

Another Spanish counter-terrorist law puts suspected terrorists cases under the specialized tribunal Audiencia Nacional in Madrid. Under Article 509 suspected terrorists are subject to being held "incommunicado" for up to thirteen days, during which they have no contact with the outside world, including informing their family of their arrest, consultation with private lawyers or examination by a physician other than the coroners.

In 1992, ETA's three top leaders - military leader Francisco Mujika Garmendia ("Pakito"), political leader José Luis Alvarez Santacristina ("Txelis") and logistical leader José María Arregi Erostarbe ("Fiti"), often referred to collectively as the "cupola" of ETA or as the Artapalo collective (10) - were arrested in the French Basque town of Bidart, which led to changes in ETA's leadership and direction. After a two-month truce, ETA adopted even more radical positions. The principal consequence of the change appears to have been the creation of the "Y Groups", young people (generally minors) dedicated to so-called "kale borroka" - street struggle - and whose activities included burning buses, street lamps, benches, ATMs, garbage containers, etc. and throwing Molotov cocktails. The appearance of these groups was attributed by many to supposed weakness of ETA, which obliged them to resort to minors to maintain or augment their impact on society after arrests of leading militants, including the "cupola". ETA also began to menace leaders of other parties besides rival Basque nationalist parties. The existence of the "Y Groups" as an organized phenomenon has been contested by some supporters of Basque national liberation, who claim that this construction is merely a trumped-up excuse to give longer prison sentences to those convicted of street violence.

In 1995, the armed organization again launched a peace proposal. The so-called Democratic Alternative replaced the earlier KAS Alternative as a minimum proposal for the establishment of Euskal Herria. The Democratic Alternative offered the cessation of all armed ETA activity if the Spanish-government would recognize the Basque people as having sovereignty over Basque territory, the right to self-determination and that it freed all ETA members in prison. The Spanish government ultimately rejected this peace offer.

Also in 1995 came a failed ETA car bombing attempt directed against José María Aznar, a conservative politician who was leader of the then-opposition Partido Popular (PP) and was shortly after elected to the presidency of the government; there was also an abortive attempt in Majorca on the life of King Juan Carlos I. Still, the act with the largest social impact came the following year. July 10, 1997 PP council member Miguel Ángel Blanco was kidnapped in the Basque city of Ermua and his death threatened unless the Spanish government would meet ETA's demands. More than six million people demonstrated to demand his liberation, with demonstrations occurring as much in the Basque regions as elsewhere in Spain. After three days, ETA carried through their threat, killing him and unleashing massive demonstrations reflecting the ETA action with the cries of "Assassins" and "Basques yes, ETA no". This response came to be known as the "Spirit of Ermua".

After the Good Friday Accord marked the beginning of the end of violent hostilities in Northern Ireland, and given that the Ajuria-Enea pact had failed to bring peace to the Basque Country, the Lizarra/Estella Pact brought together political parties, unions, and other

Basque groups in hopes again of changing the political situation. Shortly after, September 18, 1998, ETA declared a unilateral truce or ceasefire, and began a process of dialogue with Spain's PP government. The dialogue continued for some time, but ETA resumed assassinations in 2000, accusing the government of being "inflexible" and of "not wanting dialogue". The communique that declared the end of the truce cited the failure of the process initiated in the Lizarra/Estella Pact to achieve political change as the reason for the return to violence. The Spanish government, from the highest levels, accused ETA of having declared a false truce in order to rearm. Some of that was demonstrated by the appropiation of part of ETA's internal communications at the time of the truce. Later came acts of violence such as the November 6, 2001 car bomb in Madrid, which injured sixty five, and attacks on football stadiums and tourist destinations.

The September 11, 2001 attacks appeared to have dealt a hard blow to ETA, owing to the toughening of antiterrorist measures (such as the freezing of bank accounts), the increase in international police coordination, and the end of the toleration some countries had, up until then, extended to ETA. In addition, in n 2002 the Basque nationalist youth movement Jarrai was outlawed and the law of parties was changed outlawing Herri Batasuna, the "political arm" of ETA (although even before the change in law, Batasuna had been largely paralyzed and under judicial investigation by judge Baltasar Garzón).

With ever-increasing frequency, attempted ETA actions have been frustrated by Spanish security forces.

On Christmas Eve 2003, in San Sebastián and in Hernani, National Police arrested two ETA members who had left dynamite in a railroad car prepared explode in Chamartín Station in Madrid. On March 1, 2004, in a place between Alcalá de Henares and Madrid, a light truck with 536kg of explosives was left to cause a massacre, but was prevented by the action of the Guardia Civil.

Recent events

* October 8, 1999: ETA is designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTA) by the U.S. government for the first time.

* 25 May 2001: Thousands of Spaniards participate in a silent march through San Sebastian, a northern city, to protest the killing of journalist Santiago Oleaga Elejabarrieta. Banners are held that read "No To ETA - Peace And Freedom." Spanish reporters give a statement saying, "However much they kill and try to impose their cause through terror we, as media professionals, will defend the expression which took so long to achieve in this country."

* 11 July 2001 Hundreds of people gather in Madrid to commemorate the life of slain policeman Luis Ortiz de la Rosa, who was killed the preceding day. The rally protests ETA's actions.

* 15 July 2001: CNN reports that hundreds of Spaniards have gathered in city and town halls around Spain to silently protest two killings blamed on the "Basque terrorist group ETA". The cities include Pamplona, Vitoria, and Zaragoza.

* 24 August 2001: The Spanish police arrest six suspected ETA members in the Barcelona suburb of Terrasa, seizing over 550 pounds of what CNN reports as "explosives, firearms, forged license plates and electronic detonator components."

* 26 February 2002: U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill announces that the U.S. has frozen assets of twenty one people associated with ETA.

* 22 December 2002: Ibon Fernandez Iradi, who is suspected of teaching ETA members how to make bombs, escapes from custody in a police station in Bayonne, France.

* 8 October 2003: thirty four suspected ETA members are arrested in the early morning. Twenty-nine are apprehended in northern Spain and five in France.

* 9 December 2003: Police in southwestern France arrest Gorka Palacios, twenty nine, the alleged military commander of ETA. Three people who the police said were collaborators were also arrested in the 6:00 AM raid on a house in the village of Lons, near the town of Pau. At a news conference in Marrakesh, Morocco, Spanish interior minister Ángel Acebes characterized the arrests as of "great significance" and of "first magnitude."

* February 18, 2004: ETA publicly stated that a ceasefire only in Catalonia had been in effect since January 1, based on "a desire to unite the ties between the Basque and Catalan peoples." Some claimed that this ceasefire was based on a secret pact with Josep-Lluís Carod-Rovira, leader of Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC, "Republican Left of Catalonia"). Carod-Rovira, despite admitting to having met with ETA in France in December denied having reached any accord, saying that the meeting was an attempt to drive ETA away from violence, and ended with no results. This, during an electoral campaign, became a scandal, and endangered the recent tripartite Catalan government, formed by ERC (ERC), Iniciativa per Catalunya Verds-Esquerra Unida i Alternativa (ICV-EUiA) and the Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya (PSC). The opposition then accused Aznar of being behind the leak to the media of the intelligence report detailing the meeting and Aznar refused to clarify whether he knew about this meeting before the leaking. Aznar was also questioned as to why the ETA members who attended that meeting were not detained.

* Also in 2004, ETA was initially suspected of being the authors of a series of ten bombings only a few days before the national elections, which targeted three locations along Madrid's suburban train lines on the morning of March 11, 2004, killing 192 civilians (see 11 March 2004 Madrid attacks). This theory was officially endorsed by José María Aznar's government, despite the police quickly gathering evidence pointing towards Islamic terrorism. Many Spanish citizens took this rush to judgment as an offence towards the victims of the attacks and towards the Spanish people; this was generally seen as a decisive factor in the electoral result which overturned Aznar's government (see Spanish legislative election, 2004). The authorship of this attack, the largest European terrorist incident in terms of lives lost since the 1988 Pan Am flight 103 flight bombing, has been finally ascribed to Islamist militants by the Spanish police.

* 20 February 2004: Nine men and a woman are arrested, making the number of ETA suspects detained this week thirty three. They worked on a Basque-language newspaper, Euskaldunon Egunkaria, published statements from ETA. They've been released and their torture claims dismissed without being investigated or even calling them to testify (11).

* 21 March 2004: A spokesman for the newly elected PSOE government of Spain rejects a proposal from ETA for negotiations because ETA was not prepared to surrender its weapons.

* September 27, 2004: ETA militants sent a videotape to Gara, a Basque newspaper based in Gipuzkoa, in which the militants stated that ETA would continue to fight for Basque self-determination and that ETA would "respond with arms at the ready to those who deny us through the force of arms." This videotape represented ETA's first major public statement since the 11 March attacks. During the weekend preceding the videotape release, the group claimed responsibility for a series of bombings that hampered electricity transmission between France and Spain.

* October 3, 2004: French police launched an operation against ETA's logistical apparatus, making 21 arrests, among them the couple who functioned as top ETA leaders, Mikel Albizu Iriarte ("Mikel Antza") and Soledad Iparragirre ("Anboto"). They found four zulos (caches) with a vast quantity of armaments, much greater than had been estimated to be at ETA's disposal; they also managed to turn up information about ETA's printing an internal newsletter, but nothing leading to any major bank account or other hoard of money. The operation was considered one of the most successful since Bidart in 1992. As of October 2004, it appears that these measures will result in ETA leadership moving into different hands; it is too soon to evaluate the consequences. Spain has solicited the extradition of Mikel Antza y Amboto via a Euroorden.

* December 12, 2004: The Real Madrid Santiago Bernabéu stadium football Stadium was evacuated due to a phoned-in bomb threat in name of ETA. The bomb-expected to blow up at 9:00 p.m.-didn't explode, and the 69,000 spectators of the match under way at the time of the call were safely evacuated by the Spanish Police at 8:45 p.m.

* May 17, 2005: The Spanish Government offered to hold talks with ETA if it renounced violence. The Opposition Popular Party condemned the overture as premature.

* March 5, 2006: Following the February 2006 deaths of ETA members Igor Miguel Angulo Iturrate, 32, (due to an apparent suicide by hanging) and Ricardo Sainz Olmos, 41, (by a heart attack), Batasuna together with the union Langile Abertzaleen Batzordeak convoked a day of protest and general strike on March 9. (12) On the morning of the strike, ETA detonated several bombs near highways, with no injuries.

March 22, 2006: ETA have declared a ceasefire after nearly 40 years fighting for independence from Spanish and French authorities. Euskadi Ta Askatasuna has decided to declare a permanent ceasefire as from 0000 (2300GMT) on 24 March 2006.

ETA declares what it describes as "permanent ceasefire"

The last fatal attack by ETA occurred in 2003. ETA was initially accused in the 11 March 2004 Madrid train bombings, but it soon became clear that the attack had been the work of Islamists. For the next two years, there was much conjecture whether ETA was refraining from their previous level of violence out of weakness, out of a change of heart or of tactics, or because the 11 March attacks had so undercut support for violent political tactics.

On 22 March 2006 ETA sent a DVD message to the Basque Network Euskal Irrati-Telebista (3) and the journals Gara (4) and Berria with and a communiqué from the organisation announcing what it called a "permanent ceasefire" that was broadcast over Spanish TV. According to the spokeswoman for the organisation, the ceasefire would begin on Friday 24 March. In their communiqué, they stated that the French and Spanish governments should cooperate and respond positively to this new situation. On 23 March, Gara published an extended version of the communiqué.

Official Reactions

PSOE: The socialist government has called for "prudence" although they, among most other parties, have reacted positively to this announcement.

PP: The People's Party (Mariano Rajoy) has shown pessimism with regards to this announcement and claims this is only a pause. He calls on the government to continue "fighting terrorism".

Basque Government: Juan José Ibarretxe has called for the establishment of a negotiation table "without exclusions" after summer.

Other armed organizations that operated in the Basque Country

* Right wing

o ATE (Anti-Terrorismo ETA)

o Batallón Vasco Español

o Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación

* Left wing

o Iraultza

o Comandos Autónomos Anticapitalistas

o Iparretarrak

International links