MADRID (Sputnik) – The operation aimed at Irastorza arrest was carried out by the French General Directorate for Internal Security and the Spanish Civil Guard. The operation is going on with more arrests being possible.
The ETA, which is abbreviation of Euskadi Ta Askatasuna in Basque, meaning Basque Homeland and Liberty, is a separatist organization that used terrorism as a way to fight for the Basque independence from Spain. Before the group announced a cessation of its armed activities in 2011, it killed some 860 people since its creation in 1959.
In 2015, Spanish Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz said that the group had been de-facto destroyed after its high-ranking leaders, David Pla and Iratxe Sorzabal, had been arrested in France.
