17 December 2003
MADRID – Spanish police arrested Wednesday three suspected members of a notorious armed leftist terrorist group in a suburb of the capital.
Police said the two men and a woman belonged to the October 1st Revolutionary Anti-fascist Groups, or GRAPO, and were arrested in the Madrid satellite town of Fuenlabrada.
GRAPO emerged in 1975 in the dying days of the Franco dictatorship as the armed wing of the radical Marxist-Leninist Reconstituted Communist Party of Spain.
Over the years, the group carried out dozens of bombings, killings and bank robberies but following a series of crackdowns by the security forces, GRAPO has been largely inactive in recent years.
The trio who were arrested are suspected of robbing a bank last June in the Madrid suburb of Alcorcon and making off with EUR 200,000.
Authorities said that the operation which netted the three on Wednesday remained on-going and that police were continuing to search the premises where the arrests took place.
[Copyright EFE with Expatica]
Subject: Spanish news