In February 2009, El Confidencial revealed that police were afraid that Martitegi would try to carry a very big attack to vindicate himself to ETA leaders.

Etxebarrieta was a major ETA leader in the 1960s, known as being behind the first killing of the Basque organization.

This cooperation reached its peak in 1992, with the arrest of all ETA leaders in the town of Bidart.

Government officials denied that it was intended to re-open the direct negotiations with ETA leaders which had been suspended, after talks in Algiers, in April 1989 [see pp. 36597; 36627-28].

Like the Irish Republican Army, ETA leaders may have felt that the mass casualty terrorism practiced by some radical Islamist groups discredited its violent tactics-though this is not known for certain.

December 29: Assassination of Mikel Goikoetxea, alleged ETA leader, in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, by a mercenary sharpshooter.

March 23: Assassination of Javier Pérez Arenaza, alleged ETA leader, in Biarritz.

This implied a change from the organization's previous low-profile in the French Basque Country, which successive ETA leaders had used to discreetly manage their activities in Spain.

Other ETA leaders had been detained in France in April.

An ETA leader, Alberto Aldana Barrena, was arrested with his wife in Ciboure, south-western France, in early October.