ETA weakened but still active 40 years after first planned killing

0 Comments | AFP, August, 2008

MADRID (AFP) — On August 2, 1968, ETA staged its first planned killing when it shot a police officer. Forty years, and more than 800 deaths, later the Basque separatist organisation appears weakened, but still remains dangerous.

In that summer of 1968, three ETA members ambushed Meliton Manzanas outside his home in the Basque city of San Sebastian.

Manzanas, a high-ranking police officer who had a reputation as a torturer, received a bullet in his back, and then four more when he was on the ground.

ETA, founded dozens of years earlier by Marxist-inspired nationalist students, was launched on a course of deadly violence.

Spain would soon emerge from the 1939-1975 dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, but it was also opening one of the darkest...