Police Operation in Mexico

The article you're about to read describes the recent police operation in Mexico against six Basque political refugees.

I will reproduce the article as is because it contains all the propaganda elements against the Basques, from denying their identity to the obliteration of a justice concept called "presumption of innocence".

Here you have it:

Mexico probes suspected chemical arms ETA link

by Lorraine Orlandi

MEXICO CITY, July 20 (Reuters) - Information on how to make chemical weapons and other materials related to possible political violence were found in a Mexican safe house used by Spaniards and Mexicans suspected of links to the guerrilla group ETA, officials said.

Ten people were arrested in Mexico and Spain on Friday in a crackdown on the financial and logistic structure of the Basque separatists.

Six Spaniards and three Mexicans were detained in cities across Mexico and were being held on Sunday awaiting extradition proceedings. One Spaniard was arrested in northern Spain, Spanish Interior Minister Angel Acebes said on Saturday.

At a house in the Pacific Coast resort of Puerto Escondido, a search turned up manuals on how to make chemical weapons and on ETA operations, as well as 25 videos of ETA activities, bank statements and other evidence, Mexico's Attorney General's Office, or PGR, said in a news release.

"An e-mail sent by code contained data on making chemical weapons," Jose Luis Santiago of the PGR's organized crime unit told reporters late on Saturday. "That does not mean they had a laboratory here and were making them."

Mexican authorities also searched houses in the Caribbean resort of Cancun, in the northern industrial hub of Monterrey, in the central city of Puebla and elsewhere where suspects were operating.

The group called itself a "refugees' collective," and officials said several of those detained allegedly channeled funds to and from ETA or helped exiled members hide their identity.

Probe continues

Accounts worth 900,000 Mexican pesos ($87,000) were frozen as part of the investigation, which began last year and is continuing, Santiago said.

"These were our first objectives in the initial phase of the operation, but we obviously will continue to explore the information obtained in the searches and the documents they themselves were carrying," he said.

The Attorney General's office said most of those held had fled Europe after involvement in ETA's campaign of bombings and assassinations in the last two decades and were in Mexico with false documents.

In the last fatal attack claimed by the group in May, ETA placed a bomb beneath a police car that killed two officers and seriously injured a third in an area of northern Spain that ETA claims as part of greater Basque homeland.

In a middle-class neighborhood of Monterrey, television cameras camped out over the weekend on the front lawn of Asier Arronategui Duradle, who authorities said was part of the ETA cell providing logistic and financial support.

His wife, Monica Busurto Marquez, told reporters her husband had nothing to do with political violence and they had been planning to move soon to Spain with their three children to join his ill father.

(With additional reporting by Deborah Tedford in Monterrey)

This is not the first attack against the Basque political refugees in Mexico, we have to remember the ongoing case that involves Lorenzo Llona Olalde. Now, Mexico has always been well regarded in the international community as a safe haven for individuals avoiding political persecution, discrimination, religious persecution and such. Sadly, the panorama is quickly changing because today Mexico is ruled by an ultra conservative political party called PAN, akin in ideology to the openly fascist Partido Popular from Spain.

Is no wonder that Mexico, seeking to get support from Spain to gain profitable trade deals with the European Union, is now willing to use Basques as scape goats. Aznar is using Mexican President Vicente Fox as a willing pawn in his repression of the Basque society.

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