Jail, not house arrest, for famous ETA prisoner

By Staff
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MADRID, June 6 (Reuters) Possibly the most reviled man in Spain was put in a police-escorted ambulance on his way to a Madrid prison today, in a public sign the government was getting tough with Basque rebels ETA for breaking a truce.

Inaki de Juana, whose scowling face has become synonomous with ETA for the Spanish public, had expected to spend the final 14 months of his jail sentence under house arrest.

But Interior Minister Alfredo Rubalcaba said ETA's announcement yesterday that its truce was over meant a return to prison for De Juana, jailed since the 1980s when he killed 25 people as leader of the Basque separatists' ''Madrid Commando''.

''The situation has changed,'' Rubalcaba told La Ser radio. De Juana won a promise of house arrest earlier this year in return for abandoning a hunger strike which had brought him near to death.

Following the decision, which came when the government still hoped to revive peace talks with ETA, tens of thousands of Spaniards marched in Madrid to demand he stay in jail.

Moved to a Basque Country hospital, De Juana was shortly expected to be allowed home. Recent photographs of him with his girlfriend have enraged right-wing newspapers and their readers.

But today he was returned to prison in the Madrid region -- probably Aranjuez, which has a well-equipped infirmary should go on hunger strike again, according to an official at the Interior Ministry who did not want to be named.

ETA has killed more than 800 people in four decades of armed struggle for independence for ancient Basque territories in northern Spain and southern France.

Reuters AM DB2131

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