FRENCH POLICE ARREST ETA MILITARY LEADER "ATA"
Baku, May 20 (AZERTAC). French police said they arrested the suspected military leader of the Basque separatist movement ETA in the southwestern town of Bayonne on Thursday.
Spanish national Mikel Kabikoitz Karrera Sarobe, known as Ata, was detained along with another man and a woman during a raid on an apartment, police said. Police also found weapons in the apartment and said the people did not resist their arrest.
He has been considered the military leader of ETA since French police arrested his predecessor Ibon Gogeascoechea in February.
ETA guerrillas active in Spain often take refuge in southwest France, areas of which they claim as part of the Basque homeland. The group has killed more than 850 people in Spain in recent decades.
The group is suspected of being behind the murder of French policeman Jean-Serge Nerin near Paris in March -- the first French security official to be killed by ETA.
After the killing, French President Nicolas Sarkozy vowed to get rid of all ETA bases and to "hunt down" its supporters.
The arrests were made after a joint investigation by the DCRI French interior security services with the Spanish Guardia Civil and Spanish intelligence service.
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