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CRIME

France to allow suspected ETA leader to face trial in Spain

A French court ruled Wednesday that a suspected former leader of the ETA Basque separatist group known as "Txeroki" can be transferred to Spain to stand trial.

txeroki basque eta leader
A Spanish police handout picture from 2009 shows ETA member Mikel Garikoitz Aspiazu Rubina alias "Txeroki" after his extradition order was received from France. AFP PHOTO / SPANISH POLICE HANDOUT

The Paris appeals court accepted a Spanish request for him to be tried there in September for suspected involvement in a 2002 car bombing in Bilbao, which caused property damage.

The transfer is valid for up to two months.

Also before appeals court judges were 11 European arrest warrants for “Txeroki” — the alias of Mikel Garikoitz Aspiazu Rubina, born in 1973.

The warrants stem from anti-terror inquiries into events between 2002 and 2008.

“Txeroki” is suspected of “belonging to a terrorist organisation” as well as planning or ordering attacks, murders or attempts at both.

While the Paris court requested more information on eight of the warrants, it accepted three of the requests.

One relates to an “attempted terrorist murder” with an explosive package in Bilbao, also in 2002, which targeted the local director of Spain’s RNE national radio.

ETA is estimated to have killed 853 people in its decades-long campaign for Basque independence, which began in 1959 under the Franco dictatorship.

The group announced a permanent ceasefire in 2011 and formally disbanded in 2018.

“Txeroki” is suspected of planning a December 2006 truck bomb attack on a Madrid airport that killed two Ecuadorian migrants and wounded several other people, also derailing a peace process that had been set up at the time.

He was arrested near France’s border with Spain in November 2008, when he was the most wanted ETA leader.

After several convictions in French courts, “Txeroki” currently stands to remain in prison until at least 2032.

He has also been sentenced to 377 years’ jail in Spain, including for 21 attempted murders.

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CRIME

Dutch woman arrested over shooting of right-wing Spanish politician

A Dutch woman was arrested in the Netherlands in relation to an attack on a right-wing Spanish politician who was shot in Madrid, Spanish police said on Tuesday.

Dutch woman arrested over shooting of right-wing Spanish politician

Alejo Vidal-Quadras, a founder of Spain’s far-right Vox party, was shot in the face in broad daylight near his home in the upscale Salamanca neighbourhood on November 9 by a motorcycle passenger.

Long a supporter of the Iranian opposition, the 78-year-old Vidal-Quadras has accused the Iranian regime of involvement in the shooting.

Four people had already been arrested as part of the investigation into the shooting, but the suspected gunman — a French national of Tunisian origin with several previous convictions in France — remains at large.

“A woman was arrested in Holland for her alleged participation in the financing and preparation of the attack on Vidal-Quadras,” the national police said in a brief statement.

Police said she was detained after Spain issued a European arrest warrant.

Vidal-Quadras was a member and then vice-president of the European Parliament between 1994 and 2014.

He was also a former head of the centre-right People’s Party in Catalonia.

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