ETA (separatist group)

ETA, an acronym for Euskadi Ta Askatasuna ("Basque Homeland and Liberty"ETA BASQUE ORGANIZATION
Encyclopaedia Britannica 20 October 2011 or "Basque Country and Freedom"), was an armed Basque nationalist and far left separatist organization in the Basque Country (in northern Spain and southwestern France). The group was founded in 1959 and later evolved from a group promoting traditional Basque culture to a paramilitary group engaged in a violent campaign of bombing, assassinations, and kidnappings in the Southern Basque Country and throughout Spanish territory. Its goal was gaining independence for the Basque Country.Goiz Argi
. Goiz Argi. Retrieved on 30 January 2011. ETA was the main group within the Basque National Liberation Movement and was the most important Basque participant in the Basque conflict.

Between 1968 and 2010, it killed 829 people (including 340 civilians) and injured thousands more.Peace at Last? , People & Places, Smithsonian Magazine
Smithsonianmag.com. Retrieved on 30 January 2011. ETA was classified as a terrorist group by Spain, France, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and the European Union. This convention was followed by a plurality of domestic and international media, which also referred to the group as terrorists. There are more than 260 imprisoned former members of the group in Spain, France, and other countries.

ETA declared ceasefires in 1989, 1996, 1998 and 2006. On 5 September 2010, ETA declared a new ceasefire that remained in force, and on 20 October 2011, ETA announced a "definitive cessation of its armed activity". On 24 November 2012, it was reported that the group was ready to negotiate a "definitive end" to its operations and disband completely. The group announced on 7 April 2017 that it had given up all its weapons and explosives. On 2 May 2018, ETA made public a letter dated to 16 April 2018 according to which it had "completely dissolved all its structures and ended its political initiative".

ETA's motto was ("Keep up on both"), referring to the two figures in its symbol, a snake (representing politics) wrapped around an axe (representing armed struggle).

Structure

ETA changed its internal structure on several occasions, commonly for security reasons. The group used to have a very hierarchical organization with a leading figure at the top, delegating into three substructures: the logistical, military and political sections. Reports from Spanish and French police point towards significant changes in ETA's structures in its later years. ETA divided the three substructures into a total of eleven. The change was a response to captures, and possible infiltration, by the different law enforcement agencies. ETA intended to disperse its members and reduce the effects of detentions.

The leading committee comprised 7 to 11 individuals, and ETA's internal documentation referred to it as , an abbreviation of (directorial committee). There was another committee named that functioned as an advisory committee. The eleven different substructures were: logistics, politics, international relations with fraternal organisations, military operations, reserves, prisoner support, expropriation, information, recruitment, negotiation, and treasury.

ETA's armed operations were organized in different s (groups or commandos), generally composed of three to five members, whose objective was to conduct attacks in a specific geographic zone. The s were coordinated by the ("military cupola"). To supply the s, support groups maintained safe houses and (small rooms concealed in forests, garrets or underground, used to store arms, explosives or, sometimes, kidnapped people; the Basque word literally means "hole"). The small cellars used to hide the people kidnapped are named by ETA and ETA's supporters "people's jails".
«El técnico» construyó loss zulos de ETA
'', La Razón, 18 October 2004. The most common ''commandos'' were itinerant, not linked to any specific area, and thus were more difficult to capture.

Among its members, ETA distinguished between / ("legal ones"), those members who did not have police records and lived apparently normal lives; ("liberated") members known to the police that were on ETA's payroll and working full-time for ETA; and ("supports") who just gave occasional help and logistics support to the group when required.

There were also imprisoned members of the group, serving time scattered across Spain and France, that sometimes still had significant influence inside the organisation; and finally the ("burnt out"), members freed after having been imprisoned or those that were suspected by the group of being under police vigilance. In the past, there was also the figure of the deportees, expelled by the French government to remote countries where they lived freely. ETA's internal bulletin was named ("Column"), replacing the earlier one (1962) ("Standing").

ETA also promoted the ("street fight"), that is, violent acts against public transportation, political parties' offices or cultural buildings, destruction of private property of politicians, police, military, bank offices, journalists, council members, and anyone voicing criticism against ETA. Tactics included threats, graffiti of political mottoes, and rioting, usually using Molotov cocktails. These groups were mostly made up of young people, who were directed through youth organisations (such as , and ). Many members of ETA started their collaboration with the group as participants in the .

Political support

The former political party Batasuna, disbanded in 2003, pursued the same political goals as ETA and did not condemn ETA's use of violence. Formerly known as Euskal Herritarrok and "Herri Batasuna", it was banned by the Spanish Supreme Court as an anti-democratic organisation following the Political Parties Law (''Ley de Partidos Políticos''). It generally received 10% to 20% of the vote in the Basque Autonomous Community.

Batasuna's political status was controversial. It was considered to be the political wing of ETA. Moreover, after the investigations on the nature of the relationship between Batasuna and ETA by Judge Baltasar Garzón, who suspended the activities of the political organisation and ordered police to shut down its headquarters, the Supreme Court of Spain finally declared Batasuna illegal on 18 March 2003. The court considered proven that Batasuna had links with ETA and that it constituted in fact part of ETA's structure. In 2003, the Constitutional Tribunal upheld the legality of the law.

However, the party itself denied being the political wing of ETA, although double membership – simultaneous or alternative – between Batasuna and ETA was often recorded, such as with the cases of prominent Batasuna leaders like Josu Ternera, Arnaldo Otegi, Jon Salaberria and others.De la dirección de Batasuna a la de ETA · ELPAÍS.com
Elpais.com. Retrieved on 30 January 2011.

The Spanish Cortes (the Spanish Parliament) began the process of declaring the party illegal in August 2002 by issuing a bill entitled the ''Ley de Partidos Políticos'' which bars political parties that use violence to achieve political goals, promote hatred against different groups or seek to destroy the democratic system. The bill passed the Cortes with a 304 to 16 vote. Many within the Basque nationalistic movement strongly disputed the Law, which they considered too draconian or even unconstitutional; alleging that any party could be made illegal almost by choice, simply for not clearly stating their opposition to an attack.

Defenders of the law argued that the ''Ley de Partidos'' did not necessarily require responses to individual acts of violence, but rather a declaration of principles explicitly rejecting violence as a means of achieving political goals. Defenders also argued that the ban of a political party is subject to judicial process, with all the guarantees of the State of Law. Batasuna had failed to produce such a statement. other political parties linked to organizations such as '' Partido Comunista de España (reconstituted)'' have also been declared illegal, and Acción Nacionalista Vasca and Communist Party of the Basque Lands (EHAK/PCTV, ''Euskal Herrialdeetako Alderdi Komunista/Partido Comunista de las Tierras Vascas'') was declared illegal in September 2008.

A new party called Aukera Guztiak ''(All the Options)'' was formed expressly for the elections to the Basque Parliament of April 2005. Its supporters claimed no heritage from Batasuna, asserting that they aimed to allow Basque citizens to freely express their political ideas, even those of independence. On the matter of political violence, Aukera Guztiak stated their right not to condemn some kinds of violence more than others if they did not see fit (in this regard, the Basque National Liberation Movement (MLNV) regards present police actions as violence, torture and state terrorism). Nevertheless, most of their members and certainly most of their leadership were former Batasuna supporters or affiliates. The Spanish Supreme Court unanimously considered the party to be a successor 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 appeared born from an earlier schism from Herri Batasuna, the Communist Party of the Basque Lands (EHAK/PCTV, ''Euskal Herrialdeetako Alderdi Komunista/Partido Comunista de las Tierras Vascas''), a formerly unknown political party which had no representation in the Autonomous Basque Parliament. EHAK announced that they would apply the votes they obtained to sustain the political programme of the now-banned Aukera Guztiak platform.

This move left no time for the Spanish courts to investigate EHAK in compliance with the ''Ley de Partidos'' before the elections were held. The bulk of Batasuna supporters voted in this election for PCTV. It obtained 9 seats of 75 (12.44% of votes) in the Basque Parliament.
The election of EHAK representatives eventually allowed the programme of the now-illegal Batasuna to continue being represented without having condemned violence as required by the ''Ley de Partidos''.

In February 2011, Sortu, a party described as "the new Batasuna", was launched. Unlike predecessor parties, Sortu explicitly rejects politically motivated violence, including that of ETA. However, on 23 March 2011, the Spanish Supreme Court banned Sortu from registering as a political party on the grounds that it was linked to ETA.

Social support

The Spanish transition to democracy from 1975 on and ETA's progressive radicalisation had 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 sympathisers had been reflected in an erosion of support for the political parties identified with them. In the 1998 Basque parliament elections Euskal Herritarrok, formerly Batasuna, polled 17.7% of the votes. However, by 2001 the party's support had fallen to 10.0%. There were also concerns that Spain's "judicial offensive" against alleged ETA supporters (two Basque political parties and one NGO were banned in September 2008) constituted a threat to human rights. Strong evidence was seen that a legal network had grown so wide as to lead to the arrest of numerous innocent people. According to Amnesty International, torture was still "persistent", though not "systematic". Inroads could be undermined by judicial short-cuts and abuses of human rights.

Opinion polls

The Euskobarometro, the survey carried out by the Universidad del País Vasco (University of the Basque Country), asking about the views of ETA within the Basque population, obtained these results in May 2009:Euskobarómetro – EUSKOBAROMETRO MAYO 2009
. Alweb.ehu.es. Retrieved on 30 January 2011. 64% rejected ETA totally, 13% identified themselves as former ETA sympathisers who no longer support the group. Another 10% agreed with ETA's ends, but not their means. 3% said that their attitude towards ETA was mainly one of fear, 3% expressed indifference and 3% were undecided or did not answer. About 3% gave ETA "justified, with criticism" support (supporting the group but criticising some of their actions) and only 1% gave ETA total support. Even within Batasuna voters, at least 48% rejected ETA's violence.

A poll taken by the Basque Autonomous Government in December 2006 during ETA's "permanent" ceasefire showed that 88% of the Basques thought that all political parties needed to launch a dialogue, including a debate on the political framework for the Basque Country (86%). 69% support the idea of ratifying the results of this hypothetical multiparty dialogue through a referendum. This poll also reveals that the hope of a peaceful resolution to the issue of the constitutional status of the Basque region has fallen to 78% (from 90% in April).

These polls did not cover Navarre, where support for Basque nationalist electoral options is weaker (around 25% of the population); or the Northern Basque Country, where support is even weaker (around 15% of the population).

History

During Franco's dictatorship

ETA grew out of a student group called Ekin, founded in the early 1950s, which published a magazine and undertook direct action. ETA was founded on 31 July 1959 as Euskadi Ta Askatasuna ("Basque Homeland and Liberty" or "Basque Country and Freedom") by students frustrated by the moderate stance of the Basque Nationalist Party. (Originally, the name for the organisation used the word ''Aberri'' instead of ''Euskadi'', creating the acronym ''ATA''. However, in some Basque dialects, ''ata'' means ''duck'', so the name was changed.)

ETA held their first assembly in Bayonne, France, in 1962, during which a "declaration of principles" was formulated and following which a structure of activist cells was developed. Subsequently, Marxist and third-worldist perspectives developed within ETA, becoming the basis for a political programme set out in Federico Krutwig's 1963 book ''Vasconia'', which is considered to be the defining text of the movement. In contrast to previous Basque nationalist platforms, Krutwig's vision was anti-religious and based upon language and culture rather than race. ETA's third and fourth assemblies, held in 1964 and 1965, adopted an anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist position, seeing nationalism and the class struggle as intrinsically connected.

Some sources attributed the 1960 bombing of the Amara station in Donostia-San Sebastian (which killed a 22-month-old child) to ETA, but statistics published by the Spanish Ministry of the Interior have always showed that ETA's first victim was killed in 1968. The 1960 attack was claimed by the Portuguese and Galician left-wing group Directorio Revolucionario Ibérico de Liberación (DRIL) (together with four other very similar bombings committed that same day across Spain, all of them attributed to DRIL), and the attribution to ETA has been considered to be unfounded by researchers. Police documents dating from 1961, released in 2013, show that the DRIL was indeed the author of the bombing. A more recent study by the ''Memorial de Víctimas del Terrorismo'' based on the analysis of police diligences at the time reached the same conclusion, naming Guillermo Santoro, member of DRIL, as the author of the attack.

ETA's first killing occurred on 7 June 1968, when Guardia Civil member José Pardines Arcay was shot dead after he tried to halt ETA member Txabi Etxebarrieta during a routine road check. Etxebarrieta was chased down and killed as he tried to flee. This led to retaliation in the form of the first planned ETA assassination: that of Melitón Manzanas, chief of the secret police in San Sebastián and associated with a long record of tortures inflicted on detainees in his custody. In December 1970, several members of ETA were condemned to death in the Burgos trials (''Proceso de Burgos''), but international pressure resulted in their sentences being commuted (a process which, however, had by that time already been applied to some other members of ETA).

In early December 1970, ETA kidnapped the German consul in San Sebastian, Eugen Beilh, to exchange him for the Burgos defendants. He was released unharmed on 24 December.

Nationalists who refused to follow the tenets of Marxism–Leninism and who sought to create a united front appeared as ETA-V, but lacked the support to challenge ETA.

The most significant assassination performed by ETA during Franco's dictatorship was Operación Ogro, the December 1973 bomb assassination 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). The assassination had been planned for months and was executed by placing a bomb in a tunnel dug below the street where Carrero Blanco's car passed every day. The bomb blew up beneath the politician's car and left a massive crater in the road.

For some in the Spanish opposition, Carrero Blanco's assassination, i.e., the elimination of Franco's chosen successor was an instrumental step for the subsequent re-establishment of democracy. The government responded with new anti-terrorism laws which gave police greater powers and empowered military tribunals to pass death sentences against those found guilty. However, the last use of capital punishment in Spain when two ETA members were executed in September 1975, eight weeks before Franco's death, sparked massive domestic and international protests against the Spanish government.

During the transition

During the Spanish transition to democracy which began following Franco's death, ETA split into two separate groups: ETA political-military or ETA(pm), and ETA military or ETA(m).

Both ETA(m) and ETA(pm) refused offers of amnesty, and instead pursued and intensified their violent struggle. The years 1978–1980 were to prove ETA's most deadly, with 68, 76, and 98 fatalities, respectively.

During the Franco dictatorship, ETA was able to take advantage of tolerance 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 after 1983 the French authorities started to collaborate with the Spanish government against ETA.

In the 1980s, ETA(pm) accepted the Spanish government's offer of individual pardons to all ETA prisoners, even those who had committed violent crimes, who publicly abandoned the policy of violence. This caused a new division in ETA(pm) between the seventh and eighth assemblies. ETA VII accepted this partial amnesty granted by the now democratic Spanish government and integrated into the political party ''Euskadiko Ezkerra'' ("Left of the Basque Country").

ETA VIII, after a brief period of independent activity, eventually integrated into ETA(m). With no factions existing anymore, ETA(m) reclaimed the original name of Euskadi Ta Askatasuna.

GAL

During the 1980s a "dirty war" ensued using the Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación (GAL, "Antiterrorist Liberation Groups"), a paramilitary group which billed themselves as counter-terrorist, active between 1983 and 1987. The GAL's stated mission was to avenge every ETA killing with another killing of ETA exiles in the French department of Pyrénées Atlantiques. GAL committed 27 assassinations (all but one in France), plus several kidnappings and torture, not only of ETA members but of civilians supposedly related to those, some of whom turned out to have nothing to do with ETA. GAL activities were a follow-up of similar dirty war actions by death squads, actively supported by members of Spanish security forces and secret services, using names such as active from 1975 to 1981. They were responsible for the killing of about 48 people.

One consequence of GAL's activities in France was the decision in 1984 by interior minister Pierre Joxe to permit the extradition of ETA suspects to Spain. Reaching this decision had taken 25 years and was critical in curbing ETA's capabilities by denial of previously safe territory in France.

The airing of the state-sponsored "dirty war" scheme and the imprisonment of officials responsible for GAL in the early 1990s led to a political scandal in Spain. The group's connections with the state were unveiled by the Spanish journal , with an investigative series leading to the GAL plot being discovered and a national trial initiated. As a consequence, the group's attacks since the revelation have generally been dubbed state terrorism.

In 1997 the Spanish court finished its trial, which resulted in convictions and imprisonment of several individuals related to the GAL, including civil servants and politicians up to the highest levels of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) government, such as former Homeland Minister José Barrionuevo. Premier Felipe González was quoted as saying that the constitutional state has to defend itself "even in the sewers" (), something which, for some, indicated at least his knowledge of the scheme. However, his involvement with the GAL could never be proven.

These events marked the end of the armed "counter-terrorist" period in Spain and no major cases of foul play on the part of the Spanish government after 1987 (when GAL ceased to operate) have been proven in courts.

Human rights

According to the radical nationalist group, Euskal Memoria, between 1960 and 2010 there were 465 deaths in the Basque Country due to (primarily Spanish) state violence. This figure is considerably higher than those given elsewhere, which are usually between 250 and 300. Critics of ETA cite only 56 members of that organisation killed by state forces since 1975.

ETA members and supporters routinely claim torture at the hands of Spanish police forces. While these claims are hard to verify, some convictions were based on confessions while prisoners were held incommunicado and without access to a lawyer of their choice, for a maximum of five days. These confessions were routinely repudiated by the defendants during trials as having been extracted under torture. There were some successful prosecutions of proven tortures during the "dirty war" period of the mid-1980s, although the penalties have been considered by Amnesty International as unjustifiably light and lenient with co-conspirators and enablers.

In this regard, Amnesty International showed concern for the continuous disregard of the recommendations issued by the agency to prevent the alleged abuses from possibly taking place. Also in this regard, ETA's manuals were found instructing its members and supporters to claim routinely that they had been tortured while detained. Unai Romano's case was very controversial: pictures of him with a symmetrically swollen face of uncertain aetiology were published after his incommunicado period leading to claims of police abuse and torture. Martxelo Otamendi, the ex-director of the Basque newspaper , decided to bring charges in September 2008 against the Spanish Government in the European Court of Human Rights for "not inspecting properly" cases tainted by torture.

As a result of ETA's violence, threats and killings of journalists, Reporters Without Borders included Spain in all six editions of its annual watchlist on press freedom up to 2006. Thus, the NGO included ETA in its watchlist "Predators of Press Freedom".

Under democracy

ETA performed their first car bomb assassination in Madrid in September 1985, resulting in one death (American citizen Eugene Kent Brown, employee of Johnson & Johnson) and sixteen injuries; the Plaza República Dominicana bombing in July 1986 killed 12 members of the Guardia Civil and injured 50; on 19 June 1987, the Hipercor bombing was an attack in a shopping centre in Barcelona, killing 21 and injuring 45; in the last case, entire families were killed. The horror caused then was so striking that ETA felt compelled to issue a communiqué stating that they had given warning of the Hipercor bomb, but that the police had declined to evacuate the area. The police said that the warning came only a few minutes before the bomb exploded.

In 1986 (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 political violence. Also in 1986, in Ordizia, ETA gunned down María Dolores Katarain, known as "Yoyes", while she was walking with her infant son. Yoyes was a former member of ETA who had abandoned the armed struggle and rejoined civil society: they accused her of "desertion" because of her taking advantage of the Spanish reinsertion policy which granted amnesty to those prisoners who publicly renounced political violence (see below).

On 12 January 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 28 January, ETA announced a 60-day "ceasefire", later prolonged several times. Negotiations known as the ("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 violence 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, claiming cruelty of separating family members from the insurgents. Much of the protest against this policy runs under the slogan ("Basque prisoners to the Basque Country"; by "Basque prisoners" only ETA members are meant). It has to be noted that almost in any Spanish jail there is a group of ETA prisoners, as the number of ETA prisoners makes it difficult to disperse them.

'' /'' ("Pro-Amnesty Managing Assemblies", currently illegal), later ("Freedom") and ("The Family Members"), provided support for prisoners and families. The Basque Government and several Nationalist town halls granted money on humanitarian reasons for relatives to visit prisoners. The long road trips have caused accidental deaths that are protested against by Nationalist Prisoner's Family supporters.

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

Another Spanish "counter-terrorist" law puts suspected terrorist cases under the central tribunal in Madrid, due to the threats by the group over the Basque courts. 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 other than through the court-appointed lawyer, including informing their family of their arrest, consultation with private lawyers or examination by a physician other than the coroners. In comparison, the habeas corpus term for other suspects is three days.

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 "cúpula" of ETA or as the Artapalo collective—were arrested in the northern Basque town of Bidart