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File: Masked members of the Basque separatist group ETA raise their fists in unison following a news conference at an unknown location. Anonymous/AP
Decommissioning
Basque separatists ETA hand over weapons and completely disarm
ETA says its initiative will bring the final curtain down on a decades-long armed campaign.
11.41am, 8 Apr 2017
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THE BASQUE SEPARATIST group ETA has provided France with a list of arms caches under its promise to completely disarm by today, an independent verification panel said.
ETA says its initiative will bring the final curtain down on a decades-long armed campaign to gain independence for the Basque country straddling the Spanish-French border.
At a press conference in the French Basque city of Bayonne, a group called the International Verification Commission (IVC) confirmed that it had received a list of arms caches from intermediaries, and this had been handed “to the French authorities.”
Earlier, informed sources said ETA had provided French police with a list of 12 caches located in the southwestern French departments, or counties, of the Gers, Pyrenees-Atlantiques and Hautes-Pyrenees, they said.
The list was later revised to eight caches, located in the Pyrenees-Atlantiques.
Founded in 1959, ETA has been blamed for the deaths of 829 people in a string of bombings and shootings dating back to 1968. Thousands more were injured.
In 2011, after a string of arrests among its senior ranks and stirring mass protests after particularly bloody attacks, ETA announced that it had abandoned its armed campaign.
The move did not entail disarmament, though.
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It has more recently sought to negotiate its dissolution in exchange for amnesties or improved prison conditions for roughly 350 of its members held in Spain and France, and for current members living under cover.
Bob Edme / AP
Bob Edme / AP / AP
But both France and Spain have taken a firm line and refused any concessions.
Experts on ETA have previously estimated the group’s remaining arsenal comprises 130 handguns and two tonnes of explosives.
The IVC, which was set up to monitor ETA’s 2011 ceasefire pledge, is not recognised by either the French or the Spanish governments, but its involvement is supported by the government in Spain’s autonomous Basque region.
It lists among its members Ronnie Kasrils, a former minister of intelligence in post-apartheid South Africa; Chris Maccabe, a former senior British civil servant who helped negotiate Northern Ireland’s “Good Friday” peace agreement in 1998; and General Satish Nambiar, a former deputy chief in the Indian army with experience of UN peacekeeping in the former Yugoslavia.
The IVC’s spokesman, Ram Manikkalingam, a former advisor on the peace process in Sri Lanka, told the press conference in Bayonne that the panel had received the list of caches via “the artisans of peace” — a French civil society group headed by an environmentalist, Txetx Etcheverry.
French police are on standby to take possession of the weapons, officials have told AFP.
Don’t agree SF and IRA got a very generous deal from British and Irish governments….In government in NI and all their prisoners out of jail……In contrast ETA are getting nothing …..
Diarmuid it amazing with all this technology & new laws that we seem to have a attack almost every week since 9/11. You might like to buy into this propaganda that the ira was full of informers if it was the British goverment let people be killed for no reason & why deal with sf if the ira was so infiltrated.
Not from centrally organised European terrorist groups like PIRA, UVF, ETA… cowards who murdered others, but wanted their lives spared and human rights respected.
Wonder would the IRA have done the same if there was no Good Friday Agreement….Like ETA they had lots of informers and their supporters were tried of the killing….
Diarmuid your arguement that the ira were defeated & full of informers so why did the british feel the need to talk with sf if the ira was finished & every attack in europe since 7/7 has been done by french,belgian,british all european born.I think you like to think the security services are like bond but most of they’re succeses have been by luck or accident
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