This afternoon a press release was issued by the Ministry of the Interior announcing that the last active ETA terrorist cell in Spain had been arrested, giving names and addresses.
BUT – they sent the press release BEFORE the police swooped!
Meaning the terrorists started seeing the headlines on the websites and on twitter, realised what had happened and when the police actually arrived, were busy destroying all the evidence.
When the police arrived at the conference centre where the terrorist were meeting, they found them busy destroying computers and shredding paperwork.
The Guardia Civil were trying to arrest a cell of terrorists who were still controlling the financial and legal arms of ETA, the terrorist group. The arrested people are Basque lawyers and activists. They were supposedly having a meeting to discuss the illegal financing of the armed group, and the Guardia Civil had been waiting to swoop, knowing that they would be carrying all the incrimination evidence needed to finally close them down.
It seems that the Guardia Civil commander called the Minister of the Interior, Jorge Fernández Díaz, to confirm the operation was about to be launched at 15:06. Due to a misunderstanding, a prepared press release was issued to all Spanish media outlets. But the police unit hadn’t at that point left their barracks.
Upon realising what had happened they rushed to make the arrests, but the terrorists had already been notified and were taking steps.
At 15:36, the press release was withdrawn and the heads of the media outlets were being notified to withdraw the news reports, but it was too late.
Dj.info reckons that you can forget about anyone being publicly disciplined for this atrocious piece on incompetence. Minister Jorge later confirmed the arrests, but refused to comment on the pre-release of the report.