HOWZAT

Txeroki is from a middle-class family in Bilbao who reject violence. He started to become aligned to the separatist organisation at the end of the 1990s. His lover is another Eta militant, Amaia Urizar de Paz.

In another development, a convicted Eta terrorist wanted in Spain was released last night on £5,000 bail after handing himself in to police in Belfast. Ignacio de Juana Chaos, who served 21 years of a 3,000-year prison sentence for murdering 25 people, is wanted in Spain for allegedly encouraging terrorism.

The case revolves around a letter read out in his name after he left jail in August. In it, de Juana Chaos uses a Basque saying meaning “Kick it up the field” – a footballing allusion that the Spanish authorities interpret as urging Eta onwards in its violent campaign.

De Juana Chaos has been living in Belfast for six weeks. He applied for social security benefits a week after his arrival.

The arch enemy

— The arrest of Txeroki, above, the alleged military chief of Eta, is another feather in the cap of Laurence Le Vert, below, a Paris judge who has waged a long war against the Basque terrorist movement

— Ms Le Vert, 57, whose husband, Christopher Crosthwaite, is a retired English lawyer, has spent two decades in the Paris-based judicial terrorist unit, specialising in the networks of Eta activists and supporters

— Quiet and tough, Ms Le Vert has unrivalled knowledge of the Basque movement. Her investigators have tracked down and arrested dozens of Eta operatives

— Eta regards her as an arch enemy, on a par with Judge Baltasar Garzón, in Madrid, with whom she works closely

— In 2003 police seized documents from an Eta agent containing precise details of Ms le Vert’s Paris routine, including her regular lunchtime spot near the law courts. It identified traffic lights near her Paris home at which her escorted car would be vulnerable to attack

— Ms Le Vert has been given even tighter protection.

— She never enters a public place unless it has been checked

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