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Madrid: Three suspected members of the armed Basque separatist group ETA were arrested yesterday in southwest France in the first raid since ETA called off a 15-month-old ceasefire, officials said.
The two men and one woman were arrested in the town of Bagneres de Bigorre, the interior ministry said.
The joint French-Spanish raid took place two days after ETA called off the truce, blaming the Spanish government for ruining a once-promising peace process. The group said it would be "active on all fronts", a threat interpreted as meaning it would resume its attacks.
A French police official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the detainees were believed to belong to ETA's commando network. He said they put up no resistance on being arrested, the official said.
Spain's Interior Ministry said a gun, false identity papers and equipment for stealing cars and counterfeiting registration plates were seized in the house rented by the three in the southern French town, close to the border with Spain.
The woman who was detained, Alaitz Areitio Azpiri, 28, is suspected of being involved in recruiting ETA members and in their technical and military training, the ministry statement said. She has been on the run from Spanish police since 2003. The ministry said she was involved in a shootout with French police when she broke a road block in the French pilgrimage town of Lourdes in October 2004.
The two men arrested were named as Aitor Lorente Bilbao, 40, and Igor Igartua Echevarria, 37.
Lorente Bilbao went into hiding after he was released from jail in Spain in 2006 on serving seven years for arms possession. Igartua fled Spain in 2000 as police moved to break up ETA's so-called Vizcaya cell, the statement said.
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