Madrid - The alleged military head of the militant Basque separatist group ETA was arrested in south-western France overnight, Spanish police sources said Monday. Mikel Garikoitz Aspiazu Rubina, known by his alias Txeroki, was held at 3:30 am with a woman at Cauterets ski resort near Lourdes in the Pyrenees in a coordinated operation between French and Spanish security forces.
The suspects were asleep when police broke into their flat, Spanish media reported. Both were armed.
Txeroki, 35, has been the reputed head of ETA military operations for the past five years, and was responsible for ordering and planning bomb attacks.
The woman was possibly thought to be Leire Lopez Zurutuza, who is also suspected of participating in several attacks.
Police searched the flat, which had reportedly been rented a week earlier, in the presence of the suspects.
Known as particularly violent, Txeroki is held partly responsible for the collapse of an attempt at peace talks between the Spanish government and ETA in 2006.
Born in the Basque city of Bilbao, Txeroki first joined radical separatist youths who commit acts of street violence.
He is believed to have joined ETA in 2000, participating in several attacks including one that killed a judge in 2001.
From 2004 onwards, Txeroki coordinated ETA cells, ordering the car bombing that killed two Ecuadorian immigrants at a Madrid airport underground parking lot in December 2006.
That attack prompted Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's government to end a six-month attempt at peace talks with ETA.
Txeroki is also suspected of personally shooting dead two Spanish policemen in Capbreton, southern France, in December 2007.
Txeroki's arrest followed that of another top-level ETA leader, Francisco Javier Lopez Pena, in France six months earlier.
Last week, French police detained two suspected members of ETA during a routine police check as they were cycling near Tarascon-sur- Ariege in the south of France.
ETA, which has killed more than 800 people in its campaign for a sovereign Basque state carved out of northern Spain and southern France, has long had a part of its infrastructure based in France.
ETA has been listed as a terrorist organization by the European Union and the United States.
