MADRID (Sputnik) — Earlier in the day, Spanish media reported that the group would announce a plan of final disarmament soon. The government of Spain's Basque Autonomous Community said that it believed in the reported plans.
"ETA, as it stated, will disarm. Let it do so and dissolve itself. The government of Spain will do what it always does, observe the law, to which all are equal," Rajoy said.
Spanish Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido has made a similar statement, saying that the group has to dissolve and will have no benefits from its likely disarmament.
"What #ETA has to do is to dissolve and disappear. It has had time for its disarmament and should know that is going to obtain nothing in return," Zoido said on his Twitter account on Friday.
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. It was founded on July 31, 1959 and have killed since then 860 people. In 2011 ETA announced a "definitive cessation of its armed activity."
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.
