French police detain suspected ETA car bomber, killer

French police arrested two suspected members of the Basque separatist group ETA on Tuesday, one of whom is accused in a car bombing and an assassination, the Spanish government said. French security, working with Spanish police, swooped on the armed men at a house in Albi, near Toulouse in southwestern France, the Spanish interior ministry said in a statement. The key detainee was 27-year-old Ugaitz Errazquin Telleria, suspected of being part of an ETA unit that carried out car bombings, other explosions and shooting assassinations, it said. "Because of his criminal experience, he is considered one of the most prominent members of ETA's criminal logistical system and one of the most experienced terrorists in ETA's ranks," the ministry said. Telleria, born in Bayonne, France, was suspected of taking part in a 2008 car bombing at the University of Navarra that wounded 28 people. He is also accused in the killing of a Socialist councillor Isaias Carrasco in the Basque town of Mondragon in March 2008 and the assassination of businessman Inaki Uria nine months later. The other suspect, 32-year-old Jose Javier Oses Carrasco, fled in late 2010 while on provisional release from jail for acts of street violence in the Navarra region, the statement said. ETA announced an end to its armed independence struggle last October but has yet to disarm or bow to demands from the Spanish and French governments that it disband. The group is blamed for the deaths of more than 800 people in more than 40 years of bombing and shooting for an independent Basque homeland straddling northern Spain and southern France.