An Eta prisoner on hunger-strike for 114 days has been released from a hospital in Madrid and taken to a clinic in the Basque region, in what marks the first step to allowing him to serve the rest of his sentence at home under police supervision.

Iñaki De Juana Chaos - one of the Basque separatist group’s most notorious killers - was taken by ambulance to a hospital close to the Basque city of San Sebastian. If he recovers sufficiently there, he will be taken home and placed under house arrest, to complete the last year of his sentence under police custody.

Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, the Interior Minister, said he had taken the decision personally, after consulting with judicial authorities, to avoid the death of De Juana, who is seriously ill after losing around 28kg since beginning his hunger strike.

“I have the impression that if I had not taken this decision he would have died in prison in the next couple of weeks,” the minister said. “The state has to be humane even with those who did not act this way with their victims.”

The decision to free De Juana is almost certain to spark uproar among victims of the armed Basque separatist group. Having completed an 18-year sentence for the killings of 25 soldiers and police in the 1980s, he was on the verge of release two years ago.

But fearing a public outcry, the Government charged him with making veiled terrorist threats in two newspaper articles that he wrote from prison. He was sentenced to another 13 years – later reduced to three years by the Supreme Court - prompting him to begin his hunger strike on November 7.

To keep him from dying while on remand, the courts ordered de Juana to be force-fed on December 12. A tube was inserted through his nose into his stomach and he was strapped to his bed during the 12-hour feeding sessions.

Mr Rubalcaba noted that De Juana was now serving time for the threat conviction, not the murders, and it was not clear if his release would prompt him to end the hunger strike.

Nonetheless, the Socialist government’s handling of the case has caused outcry across Spain. On Saturday, tens of thousands of people - including leading members of the conservative opposition Popular Party - protested against the Supreme Court’s decision to lower his sentence for the threat charges, accusing the Government of being soft on Eta, and demanding De Juana Chaos’s continued imprisonment. Several people were injured when a rival rally in Bilbao by his supporters was broken up by riot police.

Supporters of De Juana Chaos said yesterday that he could no longer stand and would enter a coma if his blood sugar dropped any lower. They said he had managed to rip-out his feeding tube three times on Tuesday, as prison authorities struggled to replace it.

Senior figures from the ruling Socialist Party have apparently been laying the groundwork for his release for days, saying that allowing him to die would merely hand Eta a “martyr”.

“There are many people around (De Juana) that hope he dies,” said José Blanco, the Socialist Party secretary. “I don’t wish anyone to die, I have a respect for life that terrorists do not.”

The leader of the Opposition Popular Party, Mariano Rajoy, said that “the worst possible scenario” in the case was for the Government to “cede to the blackmail of terrorists”. He said that tens, or hundreds of other Eta prisoners could follow suit.

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