Basque terrorist wanted for harbouring Eta members and storing explosives is caught in London after 12 years on the run

• Kemen Uranga is the fourth member of the terror group to be arrested in the UK in six weeks
• He is also accused of helping kill a Spanish judge in 2001

Wanted: Kemen Uranga, 43, has been detained in London on an extradition warrant and is accused of storing explosives and killing a judge

A suspected Basque terrorist who was on the run for 12 years has been arrested in Britain.
Kemen Uranga, 43, was detained on an international arrest warrant today in London and is wanted for the murder of a Spanish judge.
Uranga, an alleged member of an ETA command unit in the Basque province of Vizcaya, is believed to have shot dead Spanish judge Jose Lidon at his home in November 2001 with an accomplice.
He was already on the run from security forces a year before allegedly committing the crime.
Since 2000 it is also alleged he aided previously unknown members of Eta by finding them accommodation and storing explosives.
Artola, who featured on a 2002 American government’s list of wanted terrorists, will now appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court for an extradition hearing.
The Met said today his arrest was not related to the Olympics.
He is the fourth man linked to the outlawed terror organisation ETA to be arrested in Britain in the past six weeks.
Killer Antonio Troitino, convicted of 22 murders including a car bomb attack which killed five police officers in Madrid in 1986, was held along with an ETA explosives expert at a house in Hounslow, west London, at the end of June.
ETA fugitive Benat Atorrasagasti was arrested last month as he walked out of a pub in Leith, Scotland.

 

Spain’s Interior Ministry confirmed the arrest today and said Uranga had been living in Kentish Town.
'Kemen Uranga, who went on the run in the year 2000 after the Vizcaya command unit was smashed, stored explosives for this terrorist group and provided safe houses for members,' a spokesman said.

End: A municipal worker paints over graffiti reading 'ETA, The People Are With You' in Guernica, Spain, but despite a ceasefire the separatist group still has several leaders on the run

Uranga is the tenth ETA suspect held in the UK since 2007.
Anti-terrorism experts say Britain became a favourite bolt-hole for ETA terrorists after France began cooperating with Spain to track down fugitives living there.
Last July police held ETA chief Eneko Gogeaskoetxea, 44, at a house in Cambridge.
He had been living there with his wife and two children under an assumed name and was a member of the local squash club.
Gogeaskoetxea was wanted in Spain for attempting to assassinate King Juan Carlos at the opening of the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao in 1997.

String of arrests: Last year Eneko Gogeaskoetxea was found in Cambridge and was wanted for trying to kill the King of Spain at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao

Spanish intelligence sources say there are around 180 ETA terrorists on the run.
ETA has killed more than 800 people since it launched its campaign for an independent Basque state in the late 1960s.
In January last year the group announced a 'permanent ceasefire' following more than 40 years of bloodshed.
The terrorist group is being urged to hand over its weapons and make a public apology to victims.