Word: eta
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...raids across southern France turned up no less than 48.5 lbs (22 kg) of PETN explosives, guns and ammunition, fuses, detonators, and a total of 352 lbs (160 kg) of ammonium nitrate, which can be used to make bombs. The PETN explosives matched those used in the July 29 ETA bombing of a police barracks in Burgos in northern Spain that injured around 40 people. Investigators say they believe materials in the caches can also be traced to the ETA car bomb that exploded on July 30 on the tourist-packed island of Majorca, killing two Spanish police officers...
...French raids - executed on information provided by Spain - came in the wake of the Aug. 19 arrest of three suspected ETA members at an Alpine ski resort. Aitzol Etxaburu Arteche, 30, Andoni Sarasola, 36, and Alberto Machain Beraza, 28, are now being held as French investigators assemble a case against them for belonging to an outlawed organization and suspected involvement in terrorist activity. Not only have these police coups struck a staggering blow to ETA's potential to carry out attacks, they also represent a symbolic slap in the face coming as they do less than a month after...
...last half decade has been hard on ETA, but the timing of these busts must be particularly agonizing," says a French anti-terrorism official of the recent police operations. "Compared to what it used to be, ETA is scarcely a fragment of its former self...
...have things gotten so hard for ETA? The weakening of the group is in large part due to a revolutionary change in French attitudes. Until the early 1990s, the French viewed ETA violence as Spain's problem so long as France wasn't attacked. And as a hedge against that happening, Paris benignly ignored the ETA logistical and planning networks that were preparing strikes on Spain from France's Basque country. But when Algerian jihadists unleashed terror attacks in France in 1995, Paris was awakened to the importance of cross-border cooperation in battling extremists. It kicked its then-nascent...
...Today, 172 suspected or convicted ETA members are serving time in French prisons, 157 of them Spanish nationals. In Spain itself, there are close to 750 currently in jail. Increased coordination between Paris and Madrid, meanwhile, made things so hot for ETA that its networks started searching for other places to plot strikes. "They tried Portugal, they even tested Morocco, but authorities in those countries saw the results of our cooperation and slammed the door on ETA before it could set up shop," the French official says. "We're all sharing information on ETA and moving to smoke...