A convicted Eta terrorist wanted in Spain began receiving social security benefit payments a week after arriving in Belfast.

Juan Ignacio de Juana Chaos, 53, was released last night on £5,000 bail after a day of legal activity which began with his arrest after agreement between his lawyers and police.

De Juana, who served 21 years of a 3,000-year prison sentence for murdering 25 people, presented himself in court and left again, to be detained pending extradition hearings.

His arrest in Belfast came hours after a senior Eta military leader was detained overnight in France, in what Spanish authorities called a major blow to the separatist organisation.

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A spokesman for the Northern Irish police force said: “At the request of the Spanish authorities, a 53-year-old man has been arrested," adding that he was taken into custody at Musgrave Street police station in Belfast.

“The arrest, by virtue of a European arrest warrant for terrorist offences allegedly committed in Spain, was conducted by ... officers including detectives from the extradition and international mutual assistance unit," the police statement said.

At a hearing attended by de Juana later in the day, his lawyer said that the arrest warrant was "fundamentally flawed".

But the barrister representing the Spanish government said the alleged crime which justified the warrant amounted to a terrorist offence.

Stephen Ritchie told Recorder Tom Burgess the arrest warrant stated that on the day of his release on August 2 this year, de Juana gave an identified woman a letter to be read out in his name urging a continuation of the armed struggle.

The offending phrase said to have been made by de Juana was a Basque saying meaning “kick it up the field”, a footballing allusion which the Spanish authorities interpret as urging Eta onwards in its campaign of violence.

This constitutes as offence under Articles 27 and 28 of the Criminal Code in Spain. The equivalent offence within the UK jurisdiction under the Terrorism Act of 2006 is the encouragement of terrorism.

There was legal argument over whether the Spanish offence carried the necessary three-year sentence required for automatic extradition.

For the defence, Sean Devine told the court his client did not consent to extradition and would fight it.

He called the documents provided by the Spanish authorities as a "fundamentally flawed arrest warrant", and added: "The Spanish Government have clearly made an error in law."

The Recorder ordered a brief adjournment for lawyers to consult over whether a bail application would be opposed. He said he was minded to grant bail but ordered the Spaniard be held in custody until the police had the opportunity to inspect the address that had been given to the court.

As part of his bail conditions, de Juana must observe a nightly curfew from 8pm to 7am, report daily to a police station, hand over his Spanish identity card and remain in Northern Ireland.

De Juana was freed from a Spanish jail in August after serving 21 years for the killing of 25 people in 11 attacks.

The most deadly attack involving de Juana took place in July, 1986, when 12 members of the Civil Guard police force were killed in a bomb blast in Madrid.

Eta is blamed for the deaths of more than 820 people in its 40-year campaign of bombings and shootings to create a Basque state in northern Spain and southwestern France.

The Belfast arrest came after Eta's suspected military chief, Miguel De Garikoitz Aspiazu Rubina, was arrested by French police in the Pyrenees mountain range near the border with Spain's autonomous Basque region.

The court heard that de Juana has been living in Belfast for six weeks. He enrolled to claim social security benefits a week after his arrival and was assigned a National Insurance number.

His partner is living with him and he has enrolled in a college to learn English.

Before arriving in Belfast he had given his address, while applying for a passport through the Spanish embassy in Dublin, as that of James “Mortar” Monaghan, one of the “Colombia Three” who are on the run from lengthy prison sentences in the South American nation for training Farc Marxist rebels in IRA-style weapons fabrication techniques.

The Irish authorities have refused to extradite the Colombia Three, saying there is no extradition agreement between Ireland and Colombia. Last week Irish police raided Monaghan's house, making four arrests and taking away bomb-making equipment. Monaghan was not one of those arrested.

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