Spain Releases Former ETA Leader Arrested 'in Error'
Spain released a former senior leader of the Basque separatist group ETA on Saturday, just a day after he was arrested, a court source said, citing a legal error.
Harriet Aguirre Garcia, 35, was believed to be one of the top leaders of the armed group's military wing when he was first arrested in France in 2005 on an international warrant.
Last year he was transferred to Spain, where he was wanted for the March 2001 murder of a deputy mayor, and local media said he had only recently been released from prison when he was rearrested on Friday.
Spain's interior ministry said Garcia had been rearrested on a European warrant issued by Spain's National Court on May 27, without specifying when he was freed, or why he was arrested again.
But a source at the court said he had been released after it was discovered that no such warrant was currently in place.
The court had asked for an existing French arrest warrant to be extended, but had not yet received a response, said the source.
ETA, which announced an end to violence in 2011, is blamed for the deaths of 829 people in a four-decade campaign of shootings and bombings for an independent Basque homeland in northern Spain and southwestern France.
It is classed as a terrorist group by both the United States and European Union.
Earlier this year, the group said it would put its arsenal of weapons "out of operational use", in a historic first step towards disarmament.
Source: Agence France Presse
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