Police find ETA cache in Portugal

Police in Portugal found nearly 1.5 tons of bomb-making materials in a house used by suspected militants from armed Basque separatist group ETA, Spain's interior ministry said Saturday. Experts said the raid on the cache - if confirmed to belong to ETA - would deal a strategic blow to the armed group's suspected bid to set up a rear base across the Spanish border in Portugal.

A Spanish ministry statement said: "Portuguese security forces have seized nearly 1.5 tons of explosives in the house used by the terrorist group ETA in Portugal." They also found empty cases that could be used to make sucker-bombs.

Computers found at the cache in Casal da Averela near the central town of Obidos "have enabled us to identify two suspected terrorists," said the statement, naming the pair as Andoni Cengotitabengoa and Oier Gomez Mielgo.

The explosives stashed in the house, a garage and a car included 1,330 kilograms of ammonium nitrate, 75 kilograms of potassium nitrate and 40 liters of sulphuric acid, pentrite, aluminium powder and nitromethane.

The Basque news agency Europa Press said it was the biggest suspected ETA explosives find in 10 years. Police seized several annotated maps of Spain and Portugal, which have been sent for analysis along with the computers, the ministry statement said.

Recent arrests

Portuguese authorities said Friday they found a half-ton of explosives at the house, which "seem to fit with a terrorist network," without naming a specific group. The discovery came less than a month after Portuguese police arrested two ETA suspects who had fled Spanish authorities into northern Portugal.

Spanish Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba recently warned that ETA could be looking to set up a rear base in Portugal. This has been denied by Lisbon, but Portuguese terrorism expert Jose Manuel Anes said he believed ETA has the country in its sights. "ETA's current goal is to to set up a base in Portugal because they can no longer do so in France or Spain," he said.

French and Spanish police have stepped up cross-border cooperation against ETA militants, seizing 800 kilos of explosives in 12 caches in a series of raids across southern France last year.

ETA is blamed for 828 deaths in a 41-year campaign for independence in the Basque region of northern Spain and southwestern France, and appears on the European Union and US terrorism blacklists.

European police organization, Europol, has been warning since 2003 that ETA could be looking to use Portugal to shelter fugitive militants. "This is one of the most important operations in recent years in strategic terms - even though it was helped by chance," said Florencio Dominguez, editor of the Basque news agency Vasco Press and an expert on Basque affairs.

Dominguez argues that ETA chose Portugal "partly because it is becoming harder to operate in France" but also "because they are looking for a surprise strategy, by settling where they are not expected."

Neighbors in Casal da Averela alerted police Thursday after noticing that the house, recently rented by two men speaking Spanish, seemed to have been abandoned in a hurry, Portuguese police said.

Earlier last week, Portuguese police found four detonators of a type habitually used by ETA inside a stolen van with false number plates that was abandoned in the town of Ovidos. Portuguese bomb-disposal experts started destroying the explosives in a nearby quarry on Saturday.