Madrid blast 'ends Eta ceasefire'

Madrid blast 'ends Eta ceasefire'

Basque separatist group Eta have carried out a car bomb attack at a Madrid airport ending a ceasefire, the Spanish government has announced.
At least four people were injured in the blast in the car park of terminal four at Barajas Airport.

"It is an attack which breaks nine months without violent actions by Eta," said Spain's interior minister.

He said the prime minister would stress later that "violence and dialogue are incompatible in democracy".

Officials said Eta had made a call to claim the attack - but the Spanish government has not called off peace talks with the separatists.

The Eta ceasefire was declared in March after four decades of violence aimed at creating an independent Basque state in the north of the country.

Pressure grows

The bomb exploded at about 0900 (0800 GMT), causing minor injuries to four people including two police officers and a taxi driver, emergency services said.

The authorities had time to evacuate the area, but one person is still missing. The bomb significantly damaged the car park, sending a huge plume of smoke over the terminal.


ETA TIMELINE
1959: Eta founded
1968: Eta kills San Sebastian secret police chief Meliton Manzanas, its first victim
1973: PM Luis Carrero Blanco assassinated
1978: Political wing Herri Batasuna formed
1980: 118 people killed in bloodiest year
Sept 1998: Indefinite ceasefire
Nov 1999: End of ceasefire, followed by more bomb attacks in January and February 2000
Dec 2001: EU declares Eta a terrorist organisation
March 2003: Batasuna banned by Supreme Court
May 2003: Two police killed in Eta's last deadly attack
Nov 2005: 56 alleged Eta activists on trial in the largest prosecution of its kind
March 2006: Eta declares permanent ceasefire


Flights in and out of terminal four have been halted, and there is chaos at the other three terminals, officials say.

"It is an attack, I repeat, which breaks the permanent cease-fire which Eta ordered nearly nine months ago," Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba told a news conference.

He said Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero would "do something more extensive" when he addresses the country at about 1700 GMT on Saturday.

"It is a brief political assessment," Mr Rubalcaba said, "in line with something which you have often heard me say, which it is appropriate to repeat today more categorically than ever.

"It is that violence is incompatible with dialogue in any democracy... And that is a rule which the government will firmly maintain."

In March, Eta declared that it was permanently ending an armed campaign that has killed more than 800 people.

In response, Mr Zapatero announced the beginning of talks with the militant separatist group, although discussions have not officially started.

Victims' associations and the conservative opposition are renewing their demands that the government immediately call off the peace process, says the BBC's Danny Wood in Madrid.


Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/6219431.stm

Published: 2006/12/30 13:38:53 GMT

Saddam Hussein executed in Iraq

Saddam Hussein executed in Iraq

In a last act of defiance Saddam Hussein refused to wear a hood

The former Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, has been hanged in northern Baghdad for crimes against humanity.
Iraqi state TV showed images of Saddam Hussein going to the gallows before dawn in a building his intelligence services once used for executions.

However the moment of his execution was not shown. Pictures of his body wrapped in a shroud were later broadcast on TV.

A representative of the prime minister and a Sunni Muslim cleric were among a group of Iraqis present.

Saddam Hussein were sentenced to death by an Iraqi court on 5 November after a year-long trial over the killings of 148 Shias from the town of Dujail in the 1980s.

In a statement, Iraq's Prime Minister, Nouri Maliki, said the execution had closed a dark chapter in Iraq's history.

"Justice, in the name of the people, has carried out the death sentence against the criminal Saddam, who faced his fate like all tyrants, frightened and terrified during a hard day which he did not expect," it read.

Holding Koran

A small group of Iraqis witnessed the execution in a spartan concrete-lined chamber at an Iraqi compound known by the Americans as Camp Justice in the suburb of Khadimiya.


We took him to the gallows and he was saying some few slogans. He was very, very, very, broken
Mouwafak al-Rubaie
Iraq National Security Adviser


They watched as a judge read out the sentence to Saddam Hussein, 69. The former Iraqi leader was carrying a copy of the Koran and asked for it to be given to a friend.

Footage broadcast later on Iraqi state TV showed a subdued Saddam Hussein being led to gallows by a group of masked men.

He was dressed in a white shirt and dark overcoat, rather than prison garb.

Saddam Hussein was led up onto the gallows platform and a dark piece of cloth placed around his neck, followed by the noose.

When the hangman stepped forward to put the hood over his head, Saddam Hussein made it clear he wanted to die without it.

The hanging itself was not broadcast.


They felt very proud as they saw their father facing his executioners so bravely
Spokeswoman for Saddam Hussein's daughters


The execution procedure took just a few minutes.

Iraqi National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie, who witnessed the execution, told the BBC that the former leader went to the gallows quietly:

"We took him to the gallows and he was saying some few slogans. He was very, very, very, broken."

In other developments:



US troops and Iraqi security forces are put on high alert and security is increased at US embassies around the world

Three car bombs go off in quick succession in a mainly Shia Baghdad district, killing at least 25 people and injuring 65 others, Iraqi officials say

A bomb explodes in a market place in the mainly Shia city of Kufa, in southern Iraq, killing at least 31 people and injuring 25

The US military says that a US soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad on Friday and three marines died from wounds suffered in combat in Iraq's western Anbar province

Images of Saddam Hussein's body were also broadcast on Iraqi TV, still dressed in his overcoat and wrapped in a white sheet.


His body is reported to have been flown by helicopter to an unknown location.

Sources close to the Iraqi prime minister said the body would be buried in Iraq, but would not reveal where.

Saddam Hussein's daughters Raghad and Rana had earlier asked that their father be buried temporarily in Yemen.

According to their spokeswoman, Rasha Oudeh, the two women watched their father's final moments on TV.

"They felt very proud as they saw their father facing his executioners so bravely, standing up," Ms Oudeh said. "They pray that his soul rests in peace."

Mixed reaction

News of Saddam Hussein's execution was announced on state-run Iraqiya television, as patriotic music and images of national monuments were played out.


It is an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain, and defend itself
US President George W Bush

It initially said his half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti and Iraq's former chief judge Awad Hamed al-Bandar were also hanged, but Mr Rubaie later said only Saddam Hussein was hanged.

The others will be executed some time after the Eid festival ends next week, he said.

Other Arab TV stations aired live footage of the sunrise over Baghdad's Firdous Square, where US Marines pulled down a statue of Saddam Hussein, after he was deposed in April 2003.

There were jubilant scenes in the Baghdad Shia stronghold of Sadr City, with people dancing in the streets and sounding their car horns, and in the southern city of Basra.

But in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, where a curfew was imposed, the news sparked protests from supporters.

Protests were also reported in Samarra and Ramadi.

'Held to account'

US President George W Bush hailed the execution as "an important milestone" on the road to building an Iraqi democracy, but warned it would not end the deadly violence there.


I feel saddened by the death of Saddam, not because he deserved to live but because it is taking place under US occupation of Iraq
Nafeesa Zafar, Pakistan


He said: "It is a testament to the Iraqi people's resolve to move forward after decades of oppression that, despite his terrible crimes against his own people, Saddam Hussein received a fair trial.

"It is an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain, and defend itself, and be an ally in the War on Terror."

UK Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett welcomed the fact that Saddam Hussein had been tried by an Iraqi court "for at least some of the appalling crimes he committed" and said "he has now been held to account".

France called on Iraqis to "look towards the future and work towards reconciliation and national unity".


Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/6218485.stm