BASQUE separatist terrorists ETA is due to make a 'key announcement' on Friday in Cambo-les-Bains, south-western France, and speculation has been rife as to whether the organisation planned to break up – but that speculation has now ended with a written communication.
Nearly half a century to the day of the terrorism cell's first fatal attack, an open letter to various institutions in the northern region has been published on several news sites in the Basque Country and nationally.
ETA says it intends to 'permanently end [its] historic cycle and function' and has 'dissolved all its structures', putting 'an end to [its] political initiative'.
The organisation has already issued a public apology for the 2,742 terrorist attacks, the first of which was in 1968 and the last in summer 2009, and the deaths of around 850 people, of which 198 remain unresolved.
But the Terrorism Victims' Foundation was unconvinced and its chairwoman Maite Pagazaurtundua – who lost her brother Joseba to ETA 15 years ago – said the 'small print' in the cell's speech 'cancelled out all the nice words about being truly sorry'.
Senior politicians continue to suspect an ulterior motive – for ETA to be 'offering' to disband as a bargaining tool for its prisoners to be released or moved to jails in the Basque Country nearer their families – and as yet, all ETA's promises have rung hollow with those whose wounds remain raw, in some cases literally.
During ETA's most active years – broadly, from the early 1970s to the mid-1990s – regular attacks aimed at authorities and civilian lives were lost as collateral in addition to the Guardia Civil and National Police officers and Armed Forces members who perished.
In total, 798 terror attacks targeted these three bodies.
ETA's other main focus for its bomb blasts and shoot-outs were tourist resort areas, to create maximum visibility, although these tended to involve fewer fatalities.
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