Free Republic

Fernando Huarte Santamaría, a leader of the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) in the northern city of Gijón, Asturias, contacted Algerian terrorist Benesmail Abdelkrim in the Villabona prison in 2001. Huarte even got Abdelkrim a furlough to go to the dentist and paid his bill; the two last met in October 2004. A few days later, the police arrested Abdelkrim and found the address of a well-known ETA terrorist in his pocket. Abdelkrim served time with two other notorious prisoners, Spaniard Antonio Toro Castro and Moroccan Rafá Zouhier, two police informants accused in the March 11, 2004 bombings. In April 1997...

MADRID (Reuters) - Explosions hit two cities on Spain's north coast on Thursday after a newspaper received a warning call in the name of armed Basque separatist group ETA, and at least one person was injured, officials said. A small bomb exploded in Santander close to a major office of Spain's top bank, Santander Central Hispano, but there were no reports of injuries, officials said. Soon afterwards, police in Gijon reported that an explosion in that city had injured one person, though they could not immediately say whether it was a bomb. Both Santander, a provincial capital, and Gijon are...