ETA Convict Dies in Spanish Prison
A 36-year-old convict from the Basque armed separatist group ETA has died in a Spanish jail, authorities said Thursday, at a time of tension over prison conditions for the group's members.
Authorities said the prisoner, Arkaitz Bellon Blanco, seemed to have died of natural causes. A prisoners' support group said the government's policy of jailing ETA members far from home put them at risk.
The treatment of jailed ETA convicts is one of the most delicate issues in a standoff between the authorities and western Europe's last major armed secessionist movement.
Guards found the dead body of Bellon, who was serving a 12-year sentence for murder and other crimes, on Wednesday in the cell that he occupied alone, the prison service said in a statement.
"The prison medical service was alerted and found that the detainee was deceased and showed no external sign of violence," it said.
"There was no known history of illness that could have foretold this outcome. His demise therefore appears to indicate natural causes."
A group representing jailed ETA members, Etxerat, said Bellon was due for release soon from the prison in the southern city of Cadiz, more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) away from the Basque Country.
It said he had "suffered various attacks in prison" in 2010 and 2013, when he was in a different jail in Seville, including one "brutal beating".
ETA is blamed for the deaths of 829 people in a four-decade campaign of shootings and bombings for an independent Basque homeland in northern Spain and southwestern France.
Tensions have risen in recent months as ETA prisoners have sought in vain to gain concessions over their conditions, outraging victims' families.
Etxerat says there are about 520 prisoners who remain affiliated to ETA, most of them dispersed in jails around Spain and France.
"The dispersion of prisoners, as well as causing added punishment for the prisoners and their families, makes possible attacks and tragic events like this," it said after Bellon's death.
It said he was the third ETA member to die in prison in less than a year.
Source: Agence France Presse
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