FRENCH POLICE were searching for at least six suspected members of the Basque separatist movement Eta yesterday after a policeman was killed in a shoot-out near Paris on Tuesday night.
The 52-year-old officer was part of a patrol that was attacked after it stopped speeding cars in Dammarie-les-Lys, a quiet suburb about 50km (31 miles) southeast of Paris, late on Tuesday night. If Eta’s involvement is confirmed, it would be the first time the group has killed a member of the French security forces.
On Tuesday night police received a report that an armed gang had stolen six cars from a dealership in Dammarie-les-Lys. When a patrol stopped a number of cars near the town and began to inspect the occupants’ identity papers, two more stolen cars arrived on the scene. A shoot-out ensued, resulting in the death of one policeman and the escape of all but one of the suspects.
The arrested man, who is in his 20s, later gave police a Spanish identity matching that of a Basque individual close to Eta, according to the French daily Le Monde, which cited judicial sources.
Spanish prime minister José Luis Zapatero blamed Eta for the murder. “This time, France has paid a high price for its help in the fight against Eta, which is so important for our liberty and our security,” he said. “I feel just as strongly about the murder of this policeman as I would have done if he had been a member of our own security forces.”
Eta has used France as a staging post for years, taking advantage of the open border to evade the Spanish police. But while units have been known to be involved in the theft of vehicles and weapons in France, they have generally avoided direct confrontation with French police.
The latest incident follows an escalation of French efforts to stymie Eta, with a series of high-profile raids and arrests believed to have badly weakened the group. Earlier this month, the suspected leader of its military wing, Ibon Gogeascotxea (54), was arrested in Normandy along with two other terrorist suspects.
They were detained in a joint French-Spanish police operation near the village of Cahan, where they were driving a car with false licence plates.
The fall of the group’s leader and two of his most dangerous accomplices came after what Spanish interior minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba described as “the worst two months in Eta’s history”, during which 32 arrests were made and some 2,000kg of explosives were seized.
Commenting on the shooting, French prime minister François Fillon said the officer was “coldly assassinated by a terrorist group” before affirming “the government’s support for members of the security forces, too often confronted by savagery and deliberate violence”. Interior minister Brice Hortefeux paid a visit to Dammarie-les-Lys yesterday.
Classified as a terrorist organisation by the United States and the European Union, Eta had not claimed a fatality since July, when it killed two policemen on the island of Majorca. The militant group is blamed for more than 850 deaths in its campaign for an independent Basque state.