Top ETA suspect held in France one year after fleeing police custody
A suspected senior member of the armed Basque separatist movement ETA was arrested in southwest France, one year after he escaped from police custody, police said. They said police seized Ivon Fernandez Iradi as he was about to get into a car along with another man, who was not identified, in the town of Mont-de-Marsan. The two, who were armed, did not resist arrest. Police then took them to their apartment, where they also arrested a woman, whose identity was not revealed, and seized weapons, documents and a computer. Fernandez Iradi had been sought by police since he escaped from custody in the southwestern city of Bayonne on December 22 last year by squeezing out through his cell’s skylight window. Thursday’s arrests, by anti-terrorist police backed by local officers, followed surveillance of a group of suspects with links to ETA. Full Story