Basque convicted of plotting to kill King Carlos

A Basque separatist has been sentenced to 13 years in jail for conspiring to assassinate King Juan Carlos in a 1995 plot.

A Basque separatist has been sentenced to 13 years in jail for conspiring to assassinate King Juan Carlos in a 1995 plot.

The sentence was the first handed down against Jose Javier Arizkuren Ruiz since France surrendered him temporarily in December for Spanish courts to try him.

Prosecutors say Arizkuren helped organise a plot to shoot the king with a rifle from an apartment overlooking the marina at Palma de Mallorca as the Spanish head of state holidayed aboard the royal yacht.

Arizkuren did not travel to Palma for the attempt on the king's life. Allegedly a senior organiser of ETA attacks, he was sentenced to eight years in jail in France in December 2000 after being convicted of criminal association with a terrorist organisation.

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Spanish authorities say the shooter in the conspiracy, a Basque man, Jorge Garcia Sertutxa, had the king in the rifle's cross hairs three times over several days in late July and early August of 1995 but did not pull the trigger because his escape was not assured.

Garcia Sertutxa and two other accused members of the Basque separatist group ETA were arrested in Palma in August 1995 and tried two years later. They were convicted and drew jail terms totalling 109 years.

AP