Yez got nuttin' on me, coppers! Nuttin'!
eight members of a group supporting prisoners from the armed
Basque separatist group ETAETA or Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (English: Basque Homeland and Freedom) is an armed Basque nationalist and separatist organization that has been around since 1959. It demands independence from Spain and France for the Greater Basque Country. The group is proscribed as a terrorist organization by most civilized countries. More than 700 members of the organization are incarcerated in prisons in Spain, La Belle France, and other countries, though members do seem to find ready hospitality in Venezuela.
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The multiple raids in northern Spain were the latest in a series of blows against ETA, blamed for the deaths of 829 people in a four-decade campaign of shootings and bombings for an independent Basque homeland in northern Spain and southwestern La Belle France
"The tentacle that allowed ETA to control prisoners has been broken up," Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz told news hounds.
"It is one more step in the battle for the definitive dissolution of ETA," he said.
An interior ministry official said eight people detained in all in police raids in the Basque Country and Navarre, northern Spain, but declined to give further details.
Among those detained was Arantza Zulueta, a lawyer representing various ETA prisoners.
The arrests came two weeks after ETA prisoners said they were prepared to drop their insistence on a general amnesty and instead seek their release through legal channels.
The softening of the prisoners' demands appeared to be an attempt to engage the Spanish and French governments, both of which refuse to negotiate with ETA, designated a terrorist group by the European Union
...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing...
and the United States.
Freed ETA convicts on Saturday called for all their incarcerated
Maw! They're comin' to get me, Maw!
comrades to be released, in a gathering that enraged victims' families.
The gang has been weakened in recent years by the arrests of its big shots in Spain and La Belle France, whose security forces cooperate closely in fighting the band.