Eta blamed for death of French policeman in shoot-out near Paris

The Guardian ^ | 17 March 2010 | Gilles Tremlett / Lizzy Davies

[J Aguilar]

France and Spain vowed to intensify efforts to clamp down on Eta activities today after suspected members of the Basque separatist group killed a French policeman in a shoot-out in a town south-east of Paris.

Jean-Serge Nérin died of his injuries yesterday evening in Dammarie les Lys shortly after he was shot from a car that had been stolen by a group of at least six people, all but one of whom fled.

[happinesswithoutpeace]

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Eta and its supporters are also furious with French authorities over the death of Eta member Jon Anza, whose body was identified at a morgue in Toulouse last week.

Anza's body had been in the morgue for 10 months. He had died in a Toulouse hospital after collapsing in a local park. The body remained unidentified despite months of pressure from his family and radical Basque organisations to find out what had happened to him.

Eta has claimed Anza, who was said to have been carrying €300,000 (£270,000) of the group's money when he disappeared, was a victim of Spanish police. French doctors who carried out an autopsy this week said there were no signs of violence. He had €500 on him when he was taken to hospital.

"This is a campaign of lies organised by Eta," Spain's interior minister, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, said this week, adding that he would sue anyone who repeated the claim.

That's a lot of money. Anyone might have rolled the guy..

[J Aguilar]

I don't know what happened in this case. The whole picture is that the Socialist administration has been negotating with ETA since the 3/11 coup, and especially protecting their extortion networks from any police action. From this point of view, it would be unlikely that someone from the Spanish side touched ETA's money.

Moreover, we can advance one step further and ask ourselves the same many Spaniards do. If ETA gets so much money through their extortion networks, why needs to risk stealing? That is, where do the money collected by ETA really go?