EU court rules against France in Basque detention case

The European Court of Human Rights ruled against France on Thursday in the case of two members of a Basque separatist group, whom French authorities had imprisoned for years without trial.

The court awarded $6,743.50 each to Jose Miguel Almandoz Erviti, 42, and Patxi Abad Urkixo, 38.

French authorities arrested the two Spanish members of ETA, a Basque independence group that international media and authorities have called a terrorist organization, in December 2003 at a home in the Pyrenees Mountains.

They were found with arms and bomb components, and were placed under provisional detention for attempting to commit an act of terror.

The suspects were initially supposed to go to trial a year after their detention, but were not taken to court until November 2009.  

Court documents cited previous trials in which people charged with terrorist plots were held in provisional detention for multiple years by authorities in France, Luxembourg and Spain.

Urkixo was extradited to Spain in 2010, and Erviti remains incarcerated at a prison in the Tarascon, in the south of France.

ETA, the Basque-language acronym for Euskadi Ta Askatasuna or Basque Homeland and Freedom, is a group that has mounted a violent offensive between 1958 and 2011, demanding an autonomous Greater Basque Country.

Spain’s Interior Ministry maintains that as of 2011, ETA attacks have resulted in 829 deaths and thousands of injuries and kidnappings.

Al Jazeera’s Massoud Hayoun contributed to this report