Is Portugal a homebase for Basque terrorism?
On Friday, August 24th, the Basque separatist group ETA commited its first attack – involving a car registered in Portugal – since it announced that it was withdrawing from a self-declared cease-fire on June 5th.The Portuguese newspaper congratulates judge Baltazar Garzón for his anticipated announcement of a joint team of Spanish and Portuguese investigators. “The Spanish judge has a wealth of experience in the battle against terror. … This allows him to run the inquiry in the right direction and in a pertinent way, because if ETA’s presence is likely here, it is equally obvious that our country is not a sanctuary capable of replacing the French Basque region. Even if there is a traditional sympathy for anti-Spanish nationalism – not to be confused with the support of terrorism – ETA will never have the type of support network here that it has in Bayonne and the surrounding regions.
