ETA member arrested in Ghent after 33 years on the run

An alleged member of a commando of the Basque separatist organisation ETA was arrested in Belgium yesterday after 33 years on the run, the Spanish interior ministry has announced in a statement. Maria Natividad Jauregui Espina , known as ‘Pepona’, was arrested in Ghent at 18.30 following the issue of two European warrants, one for murder and another for terrorism, the statement said. She was a member of the Vizcaya commando between January and July 1981 and, along with other members, responsible for “various terrorist acts against the security forces of the Spanish state”. Espina, on the run since 1979, "has been involved in several terrorist attacks in which two policemen, two civilians and two military guards were killed” and which also caused “serious injuries to several agents of the security forces. According to the interior ministry of the Interior, she is "linked to the murder, committed in March 1981 in a neighbourhood of Bilbao, of a deputy police commissioner, who was shot dead with a bullet in the neck. Several days later, together with another member of the Vizcaya commando, she shot a lieutenant-colonel of the Spanish army, who later died of his injuries.". The arrest warrant for terrorism was launched in June 1981, when several civil guard officers were seriously injured after the commando opened fire on them with machine guns. ‘Pepona’ and other members of the commando had, weeks earlier, killed two civil guard officer by detonating a device. In April , the commandos had also attacked a convoy of the national police, killing a policeman and seriously injuring two others, the minister said.

The Basque organisation announced in October 2011 that it was permanently putting an end to violence, but has so far refused to decommission its weapons and to disband, citing the refusal of Spain and France to open talks, particularly over the fate of some 600 activists detained in prisons in both countries. The Spanish authorities, for their part, have decided to maintain its hard line against ETA; several suspected members have been arrested in or extradited from foreign countries to Spain in recent months.