ETA formally says farewell to arms

SAN : Basque separatist group ETA formally declared its dissolution Thursday, marking the definitive end to western Europe’s last armed insurgency after more than four decades of violence.

Created in 1959 at the height of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, ETA was blamed for hundreds of killings and kidnappings in its fight for an independent Basque homeland in northern Spain and southwest France.

In what it said was its final statement, the group announced it had “completely dismantled all its structures” and “put an end to all its political activity”. “ETA wishes to end a cycle of the conflict between the Basque Country and the Spanish and French states,” it said in the statement dated May 3 and released to international media. An audio recording of the statement being read in several languages by veteran, high-level ETA member Jose Antonio Urrutikoetxea — better known as Josu Ternera — and jailed ETA militant Marixol Iparraguirre was published on the website of Gara, a Basque regional newspaper which has traditionally been the group’s mouthpiece. ETA was blamed for the deaths of at least 829 people during its armed campaign. The group’s highest-profile killing was that of Franco’s prime minister and heir apparent, Luis Carrero Blanco, in a Madrid car bombing in 1973.

Weakened in recent years by the arrest of its leaders, ETA announced a permanent ceasefire in 2011 and began formally surrendering its arms last year.

ETA had already announced that it would be fully disbanding in a letter leaked Wednesday and addressed to various groups and figures involved in recent peace efforts. International mediators will hold a peace conference in southwest France on Friday. Irish former Sinn Fein party leader Gerry Adams and representatives of several Spanish political parties are expected to attend. Spain’s conservative Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy earlier on Thursday dismissed the planned announcement of ETA’s disbanding as “noise and propaganda” and vowed there would be “no impunity” for the group’s crimes.

“ETA can announce its disappearance but its crimes do not disappear, nor do the efforts to pursue and punish them,” he said in the northern city of Logrono.“We don’t owe them anything and we have nothing to thank them for.”