Basque terror group leader seized in French town

Published: 05 Nov 2016 14:11 GMT+01:00

The most senior ETA leader still at large was arrested Saturday in southwest France, Spanish authorities said, dealing another major blow to the embattled Basque separatist group.

Mikel Irastorza, 41, was found in a home in the French town of Ascain, in the Pyrenees region bordering Spain, the interior ministry said in a statement.

 

The couple housing Irastorza -- a 59-year-old Basque exile and his 56-year-old wife -- were also taken into custody, French sources said.    

 

Anti-terrorism prosecutors in Paris authorised the arrests and the three are due to appear before a judge in the French capital. On Friday French authorities opened a preliminary investigation into alleged criminal association with a terrorist organisation.

 

The Spanish statement said the raid, led by French security forces working with Spanish police, was aimed at the "leadership structure of ETA".

 

Irastorza was described by the ministry as "currently the most senior leader of the terrorist group ETA still at large". Spain said other arrests could follow.
   

Founded in 1959, ETA waged a violent decades-long campaign for an independent Basque homeland in northern Spain and southwestern France, and is blamed for the deaths of more than 800 people.
   

It declared a ceasefire in October 2011 but has refused to give up its weapons, and is seeking to negotiate its dissolution in exchange for amnesties or improved prison conditions for the roughly 350 ETA members held in both countries.
   

Spain's new Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido, who was only appointed on Thursday, welcomed the arrest.

Moscow Urges West to Define Enemy in Syria, Terrorists or Russia

MOSCOW - Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu urged the West on Tuesday to decide who to fight with in Syria, the terrorists or Russia.

Shoigu made his statements during a press conference with the Russian Armed Forces senior officers.

"It is time that our Western colleagues decide who to actually fight against: the terrorists or Russia," the minister was quoted by Russian media

The defense minister was commenting on the refusal of several countries to allow Russian navy ships, led by aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov and heading from the eastern Mediterranean to the coast of Syria, to bring fuel and supplies.

Moscow requested permission from Spain to anchor Russian ships in the Spanish city of Ceuta, but it withdrew this request after the Spanish authorities asked for clarification on the nature of the military participation in Syria.

"To eliminate terrorists in Syria, it is necessary to work together rather than put a spoke into partners' wheel. The gunmen use this for their own benefit," Shoigu explained, according to TASS.

On Aleppo, Shoigu added that Russia has not been using warplanes in Aleppo for 16 days, condemning that the militants killed dozens of civilians for trying to approach the humanitarian corridors.

United States Strengthens Security on California-Mexico Border

SAN DIEGO – The U.S. Border Patrol has created a special unit to supplement its agents on the eastern area of the border between San Diego and Mexico, where the presence of criminal organizations engaged in the trafficking, kidnapping and extortion of undocumented immigrants has been detected.

“Multiple smuggling organizations are responsible for threatening our Nation’s security through persistent human smuggling on Otay Mountain,” Chief Patrol Agent Richard A. Barlow said in a statement. “We will flex our enforcement posture toward these exploited areas to weaken and ultimately eliminate these criminal enterprises.”

The special unit’s Commander Matthew Dreyer, with more than 20 years in the Border Patrol, told EFE that the area is the most difficult terrain to cover in the San Diego area because of the cliffs, steep peaks, canyons, scrub and other conditions that make it hard to get around.

Traffickers use this route because they think they won’t be seen on their hike north and often don’t tell their victims about the risks of the terrain – and when the Border Patrol is about to catch up with them, the guides tend to flee, leaving their victims somewhere they’ll be unlikely to escape. That way they use the terrain to their own advantage, Dreyer said.

In the same area but south of the border, cases of extortion, kidnapping and rape of migrants have been reported.

For that reason, U.S. authorities work closely with the Federal Police of Mexico in order to wipe out those crimes.

For agent Daniel Parks, this collaboration is an example of the solid relations maintained by security agencies across the border.

They often meet to share information that will allow them to pounce on the people traffickers and combine their strategies for use in their respective jurisdictions.

By patrolling the border together, moving together toward the east, each on his own side of the border, there’s nowhere the criminals can go to get away, Parks told EFE.

Now it becomes clear that the fight for border security does not begin and end with the border wall, Parks said, adding that the only way to fight and defeat this problem at its point of origin, on the traffickers’ route to the border, on the border itself or farther into the United States, is by working closely with the Mexican government.

Thousands of Wild Buffalo Appear Out of Nowhere at Standing Rock (VIDEO)

Raw: Over 100 ND Pipeline Protesters Arrested

Syria - School air strike (Sick video)

How Syrian parents pick up their children from school.
Mutilated by #Putin_Assad air strikes#Hass #Idleb #Syria 26-10-2016 pic.twitter.com/ApdricgxAK

— شبكة الثورة السورية (@RevolutionSyria) October 27, 2016

Wildlife ranger accused over decapitated bison ( Cover-up)

Published: 27 Oct 2016 16:12 GMT+02:00

   

When two headless bison were discovered at a nature reserve in eastern Spain wildlife police launched a search for trophy hunters who they believed had poisoned the animals to death before removing their heads.

The bizarre crime against the protected animals caused outrage in Spain but now the case has taken a surreal twist with the arrest of the head of the wildlife park.

Carlos Álamo, the director of Valdeserrillas Nature park, had taken to social media to decry the death of two males in his beloved herd, animals that were brought to Spain last year as part of a bison reintroduction programme funded by the European Union.

But he appeared in court this week after being charged for negligence following a post mortem on the animals that appeared to suggest they had been starved to death.

The headless corpse of Sauron, the 660-kilo (1,455-pound) alpha male of the herd had been found in the park in mid-September followed a week later by the discovery of a second headless animal.

Initially investigators had followed the theory that the animals had been poisoned before their heads were cut off with an axe by trophy hunters, after poison pellets were discovered.

But the park director now stands accused of having behead the animals himself to cover up the fact that they had died of malnutrition.

The European bison, the continent's largest wild land mammal, once roamed across most of the continent but it was severely hunted until it finally became extinct in the wild in 1927, according to the World Wildlife Fund.