Spanish Home Office says those arrested "ETA envoys"

Ten people arrested in the Basque Country on Wednesday as part of a Spanish Civil Guard operation were "envoys for ETA" and formed a network of "part-time" solicitors who, as well as working as lawyers representing members of ETA, also carried out other activities, such as "compiling information about possible targets," among them Home Office Minister, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba.

This was the information disclosed by the Minister himself during a press conference given on Thursday, in which he explained that the ten detainees, three of which are qualified solicitors, also carried out work "recruiting militants", "mediating" in the payment of "revolutionary taxes" and acted as "political commissioners" while in prisons.

Furthermore, the Minister said that the ten arrested men and women were also working to help those members "wanted by security forces" to escape and served as messengers between heads of ETA and those in prison, for which Rubalcaba stressed that this "was not just any operation" but of the "maximum importance".

A long time gathering evidence

The Minister also went on to explain that the Civil Guard had been working a long time to gather all the evidence necessary to demonstrate that certain ETA lawyers "not only worked as lawyers, but also used their position to do other things".

Documentation confiscated during the arrest of ex-ETA chief Francisco Javier López Peña (known as Thierry) in May 2008 has been fundamental to this latest operation, in which French police and Spanish Central Intelligence were also involved.

"Everything they did was in the name of, in connection to and in coordination with ETA," the Minister insisted, adding that seventeen searches carried out by police had led to copious amounts of documentation being seized, which gave weight to the suspicions already held by security forces.

"It''s not a crime"

Lawyer Haizea Ziluaga, meanwhile, assured on Thursday that defending ETA prisoners was "not a crime" but "a point of pride", after the operation carried out by the Civil Guard on Wednesday.

In an interview with Basque radio station Info7 Irratia, Ziluaga confirmed that at the moment all that was known about the detainees was that "they are in the hands of the Spanish Civil Guard and without possibility of contact with the outside world".

Thursday afternoon press conference

On Thursday at 5.30pm, lawyers and relatives of the detained offer a press conference in Donostia-San Sebastian in which they condemn the latest police operation.