ETA members took “decommissioned” weapons with them

After members of an International Verification Commission (IVC) met last month with two ETA members who gave them a document pledging to put the organization’s weapons “beyond use,” the Basque terrorists took them in a sealed box after the event had been videotaped.

This revelation was made during a High Court hearing in which IVC members Ram Manikkalingam and Ronnie Kasrils testified before Judge Ismael Moreno, according to judicial sources.

The IVC members, however, have told EL PAÍS that the weapons and arms that were laid on a table and can been seen in the video “are non-useable,” and that the material was sealed and inoperable.

Manikkalingam and Kasrils appeared before the High Court investigating judge on Sunday after the victims of terrorism collective Covite filed a complaint demanding to know the whereabouts and identities of the two ETA members that appear in the video with them.

The BBC broadcast the video on Friday after it had reportedly received it from ETA. Hours later at a news conference in Bilbao, the IVC members said that the Basque terrorist leaders pledged to put some of its arsenal of guns and explosives beyond use, with Manikkalingam calling it “a credible and significant step."

The meeting took place late last month in Toulouse. The IVC members told the High Court judge that they traveled by train to the French City, where a man with sunglasses and a cap was waiting for them at the station. He drove them to a building where two hooded men were waiting and showed them the arsenal of weapons that it planned on decommissioning and gave them an inventory.