French police arrest top ETA suspect

French police have arrested the suspected chief of the Basque militant group ETA, the third capture in six months of a leader of the battered but still dangerous separatist organization, Spanish officials said Sunday.

French and Spanish police launched an operation Saturday that resulted in the arrests of nine ETA suspects, six in Spain’s northeastern Basque region and the rest just north of the French border, said Spanish Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba at a news conference.

Police, firing shots in the air, captured Jurdan Martitegi Lizaso, also the alleged chief of ETA’s “military” operations, and two other suspects in the village of Montauriol in southwest France. Martitegi, a fugitive wanted in several terrorist attacks, allegedly took part in ETA’s most recent deadly strike: the car bombing of a military facility that killed a Spanish army officer in the town of Santona last year.

Martitegi became the military chief after the arrest in December of his predecessor, who lasted only three weeks after replacing captured leader Mikel de Garikoitz Aspiazu, Spanish police said.

The disarray results from aggressive police infiltration and Spanish officials’ strong cooperation with authorities in France, long a refuge for ETA leaders to plot attacks and acquire guns and explosives. Rubalcaba vowed that the government would not relent.

“I don’t know if ETA already has a replacement for Martitegi, but I do know that the security forces are already hunting him,” the interior minister said. Warning that there would be no dialogue, he declared that the Basque rebels would either abandon violence “because they decide to or because we force them to.”

The capture and tough talk show how much the Socialist government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has changed since taking office in 2004 and making a much-criticized attempt to negotiate with ETA. Experts said the group was on the verge of collapse at the time.

ETA used that period to rearm itself and launch politically devastating attacks, including a bombing of the Madrid airport during Christmas 2006 that killed two. Basque militants assassinated two unarmed plainclothes investigators of the paramilitary Guardia Civil at a cafeteria in southern France in 2007.

Despite the success of security forces, the increasingly young and inexperienced leadership continues to pursue the terrorist campaign, authorities said. Martitegi was captured as the suspects met for a training course to prepare a new attack in Spain, Rubalcaba said. The arrests Saturday were overseen by Judge Baltasar Garzon of the National Court.

ETA has killed more than 825 people since the 1960s and benefits from pockets of support among nationalists in the wealthy Basque region. Its political wing has tried repeatedly to run in elections, changing names when the government outlaws its front parties.

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sebastian.rotella@latimes.com