Disarmament Day as ETA surrender weapons to French police

THE Basque separatist group ETA has provided French police with the locations of 12 stores of weapons hidden in the Pyrenees in southwestern France on Disarmament Day.

Spanish government spokesman, Inigo Mendez de Vigo, said that ETA members should now help its victims’ relatives by co-operating with hundreds of unresolved cases.

The group was founded in 1959 and later evolved from a group promoting traditional Basque culture to a paramilitary group engaged in a violent campaign of bombing, assassinations and kidnappings in the Spanish Basque country and throughout Spanish territory.

Its goal was gaining independence for the Basque country in northern Spain.

Since 1968, it has killed over 820 people including 340 civilians and injured thousands more. ETA is proscribed as a terrorist group by Spain, the United Kingdom, France, the United States and the European Union.