Spanish court convicts 21 for terror links

MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- A Spanish court on Wednesday convicted 21 people, ruling that their work on behalf of prisoners from the Basque separatist group ETA actually went deeper, with secretive links to the armed separatists themselves.

The court convicted the 21 of belonging to a terrorist group. It sentenced three leaders of the group, known as Gestoras Pro-Amnistia, to 10 years in prison, while the other 18 received eight-year sentences, according to a copy of the ruling, viewed by CNN.

Six other defendants were acquitted by the National Court, which handles cases of terrorism.

The ruling comes a day after Spain's Supreme Court outlawed a leftist political party, Basque Nationalist Action party, for its links to ETA, and ordered its immediate dissolution, the court's press office told CNN.

Just hours after Supreme Court ruling on Tuesday, police blamed ETA for a bomb they found attached to the underside of a Spanish national police officer's private car near Bilbao, the largest Basque city, the Interior Ministry said in a news release.

The bomb did not explode. The officer had driven it several kilometers to work at police headquarters in the town of Basauri, near Bilbao, where the device was discovered.

Bomb squad experts deactivated the device, which had 500 grams of explosives and a mechanism to detonate when the car moved, the ministry statement said.

The outlawed party, Basque Nationalist Action, or ANV as it is known locally, has about 400 elected town councilors in Basque city halls, and they are expected to lose their seats under the ruling, an analyst told CNN.

A lower court judge suspended the party's activities last February, preventing it from running candidates in Spain's national elections last March, due to suspicions about its ties to ETA.

ETA is blamed for more than 800 deaths in its long fight for Basque independence and is listed as a terrorist group by the European Union and the United States.

ETA has sometimes used limpet bombs attached to the underside of the cars of its victims. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Tuesday's bomb under the police officer's car.

Spanish courts previously outlawed another political party, Batasuna, for its ties to ETA, and prosecutors and lawyers for the government argued before the Supreme Court that Basque Nationalist Action was a kind of successor to Batasuna.

But a Basque Nationalist Action spokeswoman vowed that her group "will continue its political work" on behalf of the Basque left, according her comments played on SER radio.

Spanish authorities --- from the government to the courts to the police -- have tried to choke off support for ETA in recent years, with numerous arrests of ETA suspects, convictions at trial, restrictions on political activities of known ETA supporters and a clampdown on clandestine ETA financing.

The Supreme Court's chief justice, Francisco Hernando, told reporters Wednesday that in addition to outlawing Basque Nationalist Action, the court would also immediately consider a similar ban on another leftist party, the Communist Party for Basque Lands, or PCTV as it is known locally, also for suspected links to ETA, the court's press office said.

The PCTV holds seats in the Basque regional parliament, and it activities were also suspended last February by a lower court judge.

In March 2006, ETA declared a "permanent" unilateral cease-fire, raising hopes for an end to nearly 40 years of ETA violence. But an ETA bomb at Madrid's airport in December 2006 killed two men and caused heavy damage, and the Socialist government immediately ended the fledgling peace process.

Yet ETA did not officially end its cease-fire until June 2007.

There are about 500 ETA convicts or suspects in Spanish jails and more than 100 more in French jails, authorities said.

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