For reference only :Europe's Terror Groups

For reference only :Europe's Terror Groups
Most of Europe's old guard of underground groups has
collapsed, drifted away or been absorbed into the political
mainstream.
_ SPAIN: The Basque paramilitary group ETA _ full name
Euskadi Ta Askatasuna and meaning «Basque Homeland and
Freedom» _ was founded in 1958 with the objective of
carving out an independent Basque state from northeast
Spain and southwest France. It killed more than 800 people,
almost all in Spain, from 1968 to 2003. Its targets
included police officers, soldiers, judges, politicians and
journalists. ETA largely used the Basque region of France
as a comparatively safe haven for members and arms dumps.
In 1998 ETA called a cease fire to open negotiations with
the government of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, whom it
had tried to assassinate, but ETA violence resumed after 14
months. The group this week announced a «permanent
cease fire» and appealed for talks with Aznar's successor,
Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.
_ NORTHERN IRELAND: The Provisional Irish Republican Army
spent 27 years trying to bomb Northern Ireland out of the
United Kingdom and into the Irish Republic, killing about
1,775 people and maiming thousands before calling a July
1997 cease fire. The group's Sinn Fein party
representatives accepted a reform minded 1998 peace accord
for the British territory, and the Provisional IRA last
year renounced violence for political purposes and
disarmed. Three much smaller anti British paramilitary
groups _ the Irish National Liberation Army, the Continuity
IRA and Real IRA _ have degenerated into gangs focused on
smuggling fuel, cigarettes and drugs. Rival outlawed
Protestant groups, the Ulster Defense Association and the
Ulster Volunteer Force, are largely observing a 1994
cease fire and similarly mired in crime.
_ FRANCE: A wide range of separatist groups on Corsica,
part of France since 1768, have mounted hundreds of bomb
attacks and occasional assassination attempts since the
mid 1970s in hopes of securing political independence. The
largest group, the National Front for the Liberation of
Corsica or NFLN, was formed by the merger of two smaller
underground groups in 1976 and has been blamed for most
violence. Since declaring a 1999 cease fire, the NFLN has
been blamed for repeated breaches.
_ GERMANY: The Red Army Faction _ originally known as the
Baader Meinhof Gang after its founders, Andreas Baader and
Ulrike Meinhof _ was launched in 1970 with vague aims of
inciting Marxist revolution in West Germany. It kidnapped
business leaders, gunned down politicians, prosecutors and
police officers, bombed corporation headquarters and U.S.
military bases, and hijacked an airliner. Baader and two
other top figures committed suicide in prison in 1977 after
the airplane hijacking failed to win their freedom. The
group killed 32 people, its last victim in April 1991. The
group formally disbanded in April 1998.
_ GREECE: A Marxist revolutionary group called November 17
_ the date of a 1973 student uprising at an Athens
university _ claimed responsibility for more than 20
killings from 1975 to 2002. Among those it assassinated
were a CIA station chief, a U.S. Navy captain, defense
attaches at the British and American embassies, and a
Turkish diplomat. It has been inactive since 2002, when
police seeking to crush terrorism threats in the build up
to the 2004 Athens Olympics arrested key leaders, found
hideouts and seized weapons dumps.
_ ITALY: The Red Brigades, founded in 1970 to inspire
Marxist revolution in Italy, began by sabotaging factory
equipment, but graduated quickly into kidnapping and
assassination, killing hundreds of government officials,
judges and lawyers, and police officers. In 1978, Red
Brigades members kidnapped and murdered former Prime
Minister Aldo Moro. The Red Brigades split into feuding
factions in 1984, and their activities petered out with key
arrests and the end of the Cold War. 261017 mar 06