Bar games: who tipped off who in ETA extortion racket - and why?

The tip-off was real. Nobody seems to question that. On May 4, 2006 somebody - presumably a police chief - warned Joseba Elosua, an ETA sympathizer and owner of Bar Faisán, that there would be a raid against the terrorist group if he went ahead and met with an ETA member in the border town of Irún as planned. This unknown source also expressed fear that the dragnet would ruin imminent talks between the government and ETA, which had declared a ceasefire two months earlier. The tip-off was successful: the police raid was aborted.

Everything else remains a mystery. Who tipped Elosua off? Was this person acting of his own volition or executing a political order from the Interior Ministry? Why, after being warned, did Elosua not stay home, but instead met with the ETA man in France, even at the risk of being arrested there (which did not happen simply because Paris did not authorize it)? And if the goal was to avoid endangering negotiations with ETA, then why did the police raid go ahead after all just a month and a half later?

The bar was known as a drop-off point fo the extortion money paid to ETA

The government wished to "verify" that the ceasefire was for real

The Faisán case, which the opposition Popular Party (PP) is using as a weapon against Interior Minister Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba (whom many observers see as the likely Socialist candidate to succeed Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero), is one long chain of unknown quantities that the courts have been investigating for nearly five years now.

At 11am on May 4, 2006, Joseba Elosua, 72, owner of an establishment in Irún, got into his Ford Focus and drove out of his garage. He later told the judge that he saw a man standing by his front door in the rearview mirror, but did not stop to see what he wanted. Instead, he drove straight to his bar, the Faisán (Pheasant).

Elosua was well-known to police. His bar had been under surveillance for years because it was regularly used as a drop-off point for the extortion money paid to ETA by Basque businesspeople who had received threats from the group. Elosua's telephones were tapped and police had also wiretapped his car to hear the conversations inside.

A day before, on May 3, police learned that Elosua was going to meet another ETA extortion specialist that very afternoon, as well as an official from the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), Gorka Agirre, who would hand Elosua "nine bottles of wine" - code for nine million pesetas (54,000 euros), according to investigators - from an extortion campaign. Elosua would then hand it over the next day to ETA member José Antonio Cau Aldanur, who would travel to Irún from France to pick it up at Bar Faisán. The Spanish police immediately warned their French colleagues and High Court Judge Fernando Grande-Marlaska. It was agreed to launch Operation Urogallo (Capercaillie) against ETA and to make several arrests.

But the context was a sensitive one: on March 22, ETA had announced a ceasefire. The government had said that before sitting down to talks with the terrorists, it would "verify" that the ceasefire was for real. In April and May, police confirmed that ETA had given orders to put extortion on hold. Yet on May 3 blackmail money was apparently still changing hands. The judge decided to go ahead with the raid.

On May 4, 15 minutes after stepping into his bar, Elosua saw the same man who was at his front door walk in and hand him a cellphone. An unidentified voice told Elosua that his own lines were tapped and the bar under surveillance, that the police knew about the money, and that if the ETA member came to see him they would both be arrested. The voice added that this would be a fatal blow to the imminent talks.

Police know the contents of that nine-minute conversation simply because Elosua hung up, called his brother-in-law Carmelo Luquin, and both men sped in the Ford Focus to France to meet with the ETA contact there instead of in Irún. Of course, they did not know that the car was also tapped, and talked at length about the conversation Elosua had just had. The bar owner seemed in shock that a member of the police had tipped him off so as "not to screw up the [peace] process" because "there are people who want it to break up."

Police followed the car to Bayonne, in southern France, and watched the three men meet at Bar Talotegui, where a large envelope changed hands. They quickly informed their superiors, who called France, but the French police refused to step in without court authorization. There was a flurry of calls between both countries' law enforcement officials. Meanwhile, Elosua and Luquin calmly had lunch in Bayonne and returned to Irún at 3.40pm. Operation Urogallo was stymied in Spain because of a tip-off, and in France because of red tape.

Yet just a month and a half later, on June 20, a raid did take place, and 12 people were arrested, including Elosua and Luquin. A week before that, Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero had already announced that his government would sit down to talks with ETA in the summer.