Arrested ETA suspects 'were awaiting attack orders'
Police in northern Spain today arrested five suspected members of the armed Basque separatist group ETA who were awaiting orders to stage an attack, the Interior Ministry said.
The arrests stemmed from information obtained in a raid on Sunday in France that netted ETA’s alleged leader, a ministry official said.
The four men and one woman arrested before dawn today belonged to Eta’s support network “but in one way or another were integrated into ETA itself,” a ministry official said.
The suspects were awaiting instructions to stage an attack in Spain, the official said without elaborating.
Police arrested the suspects in San Sebastian and Irun, both in Basque country, and in Pamplona in neighbouring Navarra.
The ministry official said the arrests were made possible by statements from a Spanish truck driver arrested on Sunday in northern Spain, part of a broader raid in south-west France that netted 20 other arrests including that of ETA’s alleged leader, known by his alias Mikel Antza.
French police also seized a large weapons cache they said included two Russian-made surface-to-air missiles.
