Basque 'terrorists' were firemen on holiday

Spanish authorities admitted yesterday that five men on a surveillance video they had identified as Basque "terrorists" were in fact Spanish firemen on holiday.

France and Spain last Friday released images of the five taken on a closed-circuit television camera at a supermarket outside Paris, saying they were members of the Basque separatist group ETA and suspected of involvement in the killing of a French policeman last Tuesday.

"This morning (Saturday) we contacted the French authorities to tell them that the images were those of people working as firemen for the Catalan regional government," said a spokeswoman for the police and fire service in the northeastern region of Catalonia.

She said the men were in France on a climbing holiday and were recognised by colleagues in Spain who alerted authorities to the mistake.

Spanish Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba admitted an "error" and said the authorities "could probably have done things better".

A Spanish police statement last Friday had described the five as "ETA terrorists" and called for "cooperation from the public to identify them and find them".

Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega admitted that the "confusion" was regrettable but said it was vital "to continue to work as we have done" to combat ETA.

One of the five firemen shown on the video said he was stunned by the affair.

"What bothers me is that we saw on the internet that we were considered, not suspects, but actual members of ETA. That's the problem, that we were faced with an unwarranted accusation," he told Spanish national radio by telephone.

"We are going to file a complaint... because of all the harm that this has caused, the worry to our families."

France's director general of police said the five men had yesterday presented themselves to the police station at Melun, southeast of Paris.

But he added that the confusion "does not call into question" ETA's suspected involvement in the killing.

The 52-year-old French police officer was fatally wounded during a gun battle that erupted after a routine police check near Dammarie-Les-Lys southeast of Paris last Tuesday.

French investigators said they were working on the assumption that ETA was responsible although there has been no claim of responsibility from the group itself.

French anti-terrorism police arrested a 27-year-old man who identified himself as an ETA member and were hunting five others after the murder, a French judicial official said last Wednesday.

It would be the first time a French policeman has been killed by the group in France, where five top leaders have been arrested over the past two years as a result of stepped-up cross-border cooperation.

ETA, listed as a terrorist group by the EU and the US, is blamed for 828 deaths in its 41-year campaign for independence for the Basque region of northern Spain and southwestern France.