The former military chief of the Basque underground organization ETA, Javier García Gaztelu, has been sentenced to 33 years in Spain. Gaztelu, known as Txapote, was convicted by a Spanish court of murdering a prison administration official.
Three other ETA members, who had been ordered by Gaztelu to murder a car bomb in 2000 in the Basque town of Vitoria, were also convicted. The four men must also pay the widow and the daughter of the victim each 305,000 euros in damages.
"Txapote" was arrested in France in 2001 and later transferred to Spain. The 53-year-old has been repeatedly sentenced to long prison sentences for murder. Among other things, he was sentenced in November 2011 to 105 years in prison for the murder of the socialist regional politician Fernando Buesa and his bodyguard.
Founded in 1959 during the Spanish Franco dictatorship, ETA has been fighting for more than four decades of attacks, murders and kidnappings for the independence of the Basque country in northern Spain and southern France since the late 1960s. The group is blamed for the deaths of 853 people.
ETA announced in 2011 the end of its armed struggle. In April 2017, the organization claimed that it gave up its weapons completely, in May 2018, it declared its final resolution.
