Batasuna members on ETA membership charges

26 January 2005

MADRID- Top Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon charged 36 suspected members of outlawed radical Basque nationalist party Batasuna with membership of armed separatist group ETA.

Judicial sources said Garzon had additionally asked the Basque region’s highest court to investigate four Batasuna members of the regional Basque parliament, including spokesman Arnaldo Otegi, for the same reason, although the quartet enjoy immunity as deputies.

Batasuna, the main political face of the radical Basque movement, was banned in March 2003 and is considered the political mouthpiece of ETA, blamed for more than 800 deaths in its four-decade fight for a Basque homeland straddling the Pyrenees between Spain and France.

The parliamentary caucus of the group recently changed the official party name to “Sozialista Abertzaleak.”

Batasuna is regarded as a terrorist organisation by the US State Department
and the European Union.

[Copyright EFE with Expatica]

Subject: Spanish news