Spain moves to ban Basque separatist party

Giles Tremlett in Madrid
Guardian Wednesday April 10, 2002

The Spanish government has launched a campaign to ban the radical separatist party Batasuna, the Basque equivalent of Sinn Fein, for supporting the armed group Eta.

Batasuna, which represents up to 200,000 voters in the Basque country, is the target of a planned law that would see it taken before a special court if, among other things, it "excuses" or "minimises" terrorism.

Officials in the centre-right Popular party government of Jose Maria Aznar, the prime minister, said yesterday that the main text of the law had been agreed with the leading opposition party, the Socialists, and would reach parliament next month.

The law proposes the setting up of a special tribunal made up from the 16 senior supreme court judges, who would be obliged to ban any party considered to give "tacit" support to terrorism. Mr Aznar wants the government or a group of 50 MPs to be allowed to denounce a political party before the new tribunal.

The Socialists, in their only challenge to the law, have argued that Spain's attorney general should be the only person allowed to bring a political party before the special court.

Mainstream Spanish politicians routinely refer to Batasuna as the political wing of Eta. Some claim that it receives instructions directly from Eta's leadership.

Eta gunmen and women sometimes turn out to be Batasuna officials or members, but the party denies it has anything to do with Eta, apart from sharing its political aims.

"We are about to see 200,000 Basque citizens made illegal," said Joseba Permach, Batasuna's co-leader.

Batasuna has a deputy in the European parliament and several in the regional parliaments of the Basque country and Navarre, but it boycotted the last national elections.

It has already applied to change the name of its group in the Basque and Navarre parliaments in an attempt to get around the new law. "It is just trying to run away from this law," said Angel Acebes, the justice minister.

In the meantime, the state attorney's office yesterday brought legal proceedings against another Batasuna co-leader, Arnaldo Otegi, for shouting "Long live Eta" at a meeting of separatists in France last month. It is the third attempt to prosecute him. On two previous occasions, when he called Eta bombers who blew themselves up "patriots", the prosecutions failed.

Eta has killed 800 people in a 30-year campaign for independence, but its bombings and shootings have recently drastically declined after the arrest of many activists. Earlier this year it killed a 69-year-old Socialist councillor from the Basque town of Orio.

A former Eta leader, Jose Javier Arizkuren, was yesterday jailed for 13 years for plotting to kill King Juan Carlos. He sent three men to Majorca in 1995 with a sniper's rifle and instructions to hire a flat overlooking the berth of the royal yacht. The team was tailed by police and arrested shortly before the planned attack.