Miguel Garikoitz Aspiazu Rubina alias Txeroki ("Cherokee") (born July 6, 1973) is an ETA

ETA

ETA , an acronym for Euskadi Ta Askatasuna is an armed Basque nationalist and separatist organization. The group was founded in 1959 and has since evolved from a group promoting traditional Basque culture to a paramilitary group with the goal of gaining independence for the Greater Basque Country...

 member. He headed the military/commando unit of the group until his arrest in France on November 16, 2008.

ETA activity

Although he gained prominent in the military section of ETA, he rose to the highest level of ETA's leadership following the May 2008 arrest of Francisco Javier López Peña

Francisco Javier Lopez Pena

Francisco Javier López Peña alias Thierry, is an ETA member. He headed the political leadership of the group. On the 20th of May, 2008, López Peña was arrested in Bordeaux, France during a joint operation between French and Spanish police officials.-ETA activity:López Peña has been on the run from...

 also in France. As the military chief he was believed to have orchestrated, ordered and planned ETA bomb attacks.

He was rumoured to have been the person responsible for breaking a truce with the Spanish government when he authorized the Barajas bombing on December 30, 2006. Spanish authorities have also suspected Rubina personally killed two Guardia Civil police officers as they were doing undercover intelligence work in December 2007. Before his arrest he was wanted on a total of 22 criminal charges in Spain, including the murder of Judge Jose Maria Lidon in November 2001.

Imprisoned

The French Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie

Michèle Alliot-Marie

Michèle Jeanne Honorine Alliot-Marie, born 10 September 1946 and nicknamed MAM, is a French politician of the Union for a Popular Movement . A member of all but one right-wing governments of the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, she was the first woman in France to hold the portfolios of Defense , the...

 announced that he had been arrested overnight on November 16, at 3:30, in Cauterets

Cauterets

Cauterets is a spa town, a ski resort and a commune in the Hautes-Pyrénées department in south-western France.-Geography:Cauterets is located southwest of Lourdes in the beautiful valley of the Gave de Cauterets and borders the Pyrenees National Park....

following a joint investigation by French and Spanish police. He was arrested along with Leire López Zurutuza, a woman suspected of being an ETA member.

His arrest was the result of police investigative work following the arrest of two other ETA suspects who said he told them that he had killed the two officers in Capbreton on December 1, 2007. After his arrest he was sent to the judicial custody of the anti-terrorist police near Paris.

He appeared before a Paris judge where he was formally charged in connection with the killing of the two undercover Spanish police officers.

Following his arrest he was also indicted in a Spanish court for his alleged role in the Barajas bombing.

Political impact

Sections of the media asked whether his arrest could debilitate ETA's violent activity. Alternatively, the arrest could have also lead to an increase in ETA activity. Some saw it merely as the biggest blow to ETA in the last half-year since Lopez Peña's arrest. Some comments saw the arrest as marking "a further blow for hardline members of ETA."

International Reactions

The Spanish prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero said that his arrest would cause "great damage" to ETA but also warned that ETA was still "capable of carrying out attacks." Spain was put on a full security alert to guard against retaliation for Rubina's arrest.