Spain clears cops in Basque militant tipoff case

 

Spanish court has dropped an indictment that had charged a former police chief and two other police officials with tipping off members of the Basque separatist group ETA that arrests were imminent. A 14-judge panel at the National Court ruled Wednesday night there was insufficient evidence against the suspects but ordered the probe to continue and be broadened because there was evidence a crime was committed. The case is politically sensitive. At the time of the alleged incident in 2006, ETA was observing a ceasefire and during that truce the Socialist government negotiated with ETA, although the talks went nowhere and the Basque militant group reverted to violence in a matter of months. ETA has killed 829 people since 1968 in a campaign of bombings, shootings, kidnapping and extortion. It is considered a terrorist organization by Spain, the European Union and the United States. Critics of the Socialist government say that the alleged tipoff was a way of going easy on ETA and nurturing prospects for a settlement in the decades-old Basque conflict. The Interior Minister then _ the man to whom the indicted police answered _ was Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, now the Socialist candidate for prime minister in general elections on Nov. 20. The opposition conservative Popular Party has been relentless in its questioning of Perez Rubalcaba in Parliament over the tipoff. The party reacted to the court decision saying it was pleased the case is still alive and said the panel has in effect confirmed that a crime was committed. "The police collaborated with ETA so it could continue to raise funds," said its spokesman on judicial affairs, Federico Trillo. The original indictment was handed down in July. Investigating magistrate Pablo Ruz wrote there was sufficient evidence to charge then National Police chief Victor Garcia Hidalgo and two other still-active police officials with tipping off ETA members that a raid targeting its fundraising extortion unit was imminent. On May 4, 2006, police were about to swoop in on a bar in the Basque town of Irun where its owner was allegedly about to give an ETA member the equivalent of some $70,000 extorted from a Basque businessman. The National Court has said someone walked into the bar that morning and handed owner Joseba Elosua a cell phone over which he was warned he was under investigation and should not hand over the money. He did not, because it turned out the money transfer was supposed to take place not in that bar as suspected but across the border in France. Weeks later, Elosua and more than a dozen others were arrested.