Skip to main content
BBC NEWS / EUROPE
Graphics VersionBBC Sport Home
News Front Page | Africa | Americas | Asia-Pacific | Europe | Middle East | South Asia | UK | Business | Health | Science & Environment | Technology | Entertainment | Also in the news | Have Your Say |
Monday, 24 September 2007, 14:42 GMT 15:42 UK

French arrests over Basque attack

Gendarmes of the French Crime research Unit stand outside a restaurant in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, south-western France, Monday, Sept. 24, 2007 French police have carried out dawn raids to arrest 13 suspected Basque separatists over an attack last year on a luxury hotel in southern France.

Seven of the suspects are French and six are Spanish, officials said.

They include Urtzi Garcia Montero, linked to the Eta cell Donosti, Spain's interior minister said in Madrid.

No-one was hurt in the attack last June on the hotel run by star chef Alain Ducasse, but Mr Ducasse decided in February to shut down the complex.

Investigators suspect the attack was carried out by the Basque separatist group Eta or a French group sympathising with Eta, a judicial source told Reuters news agency.

Eta has waged a violent campaign since the 1960s for an independent state in north Spain and south-west France and called off a 15-month truce in June.

Repeated attacks

Some 200 gendarmes took part in Monday's arrests, the French news agency AFP reported.

Last June's attack was the third against the Ostape Hotel, run by Mr Ducasse in the town of Bidarray in the Basque Country of south-west France.

An anonymous statement released to a Basque weekly paper said the attack "was aimed against the French colonisation of the Basque country".




E-mail this to a friend

RELATED INTERNET LINKS
Spanish government (in Spanish)
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites



SEARCH BBC NEWS: 

News Front Page | Africa | Americas | Asia-Pacific | Europe | Middle East | South Asia | UK | Business | Health | Science & Environment | Technology | Entertainment | Also in the news | Have Your Say |

NewsWatch | Notes | Contact us | About BBC News | Profiles | History

^ Back to top | BBC Sport Home | BBC Homepage | Contact us | Help | ©