http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=1bf098f3-aff0-4248-b3f
7-5bbc59b91091
Canadian 'R&R' for an ETA cell
Stewart Bell, National Post
Published: Thursday, September 27, 2007
The photo taken at an organic herb farm in D'Arcy, B.C., shows three Spanish
men and their wives relaxing in a garden on plastic lawn chairs, their
coffee mugs perched on a round patio table.
It looks unexceptional, but it isn't. When the RCMP found the snapshot
during a recent raid in Vancouver, they identified the men as Ivan Apaolaza
Sancho, Victor Tejedor Bilbao and Mario Ines Torres -- all wanted
terrorists.
What they were doing at the isolated Moon Farm, deep in the Coast Mountains,
remains a mystery, but two have since been captured by the RCMP and Canada
Border Services Agency, which say they are members of the terrorist
organization ETA.
Canadian authorities have arrested Ivan Apaolaza Sancho and Victor Tejedor
Bilbao, suspected of belonging to the terrorist group ETA. A third man is at
large. Sancho is accused of participating in a Madrid car bombing in 2000,
above.
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The third, Mr. Torres, remains on the loose. Canadian immigration has issued
an arrest warrant. It describes him as a member of the International
Revolutionary Action Group. All three men in the picture are alleged to have
violent pasts.
Police files obtained by the National Post say Mr. Torres kidnapped a bank
director, placed two car bombs in front of an Iberian airlines office in
Belgium, was caught with weapons in France and has ties to ETA and several
other leftist terror groups.
The documents say Mr. Bilbao was a gunman in an ETA commando unit and took
part in four assassination attempts and several bombings, while Mr. Sancho
allegedly committed three murders as a member of another ETA cell.
There is no evidence the Spaniards were planning attacks in Canada.
Officials believe they were simply here for "R&R." Despite being wanted on
international warrants, the men spent years living freely in B.C. One drove
a black SUV to work. Another took his parents on a vacation to the Rockies
last year.
This wasn't supposed to happen anymore. After Algerian terrorist Ahmed
Ressam was caught at the Canada-U.S. border in 1999, as he was driving to
California to bomb Los Angeles airport, the Canadian government vowed to fix
the security gaps that had allowed him to live in Montreal under a false
identity. More reforms followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
But since the arrests of Mr. Sancho and Mr. Bilbao in June, some are asking
how, in post-9/11 Canada, suspected terrorists were able to hide out in the
country for so long, in Mr. Bilbao's case, for 11 years.
"Something sounds wrong about the whole thing," said Martin Collacott, a
former Canadian ambassador and a critic of Canada's immigration system.
"What aren't we doing that we should be doing? And how many others are there
around like them?"
Spanish police records say Mr. Bilbao was recruited into ETA in 1979 in the
Zubulbara neighbourhood of Bilbao, a city in the Basque region of northern
Spain. He joined a commando unit called Donibane that operated in the
Vizcaya district.
In 1981, ETA ordered Mr. Bilbao's commando unit to kill the manager of the
Basque newspaper La Gazeta del Norte, Gerardo Huezo Fernandez, who was
branded a "squealer," the documents say.
At 11 a.m., on April 4, the four man hit squad arrived at the newspaper
office at 8 Tayer Tenayo. Two stayed outside as lookouts; the other two
donned ski masks and stormed the building.
They found their target upstairs and shot at him from a distance of three or
four metres. When Mr. Fernandez fell to the ground, the gunmen fled to a
nearby market, ditching their guns in a parked car. They didn't realize
until later that their shots had missed.
That summer, the same commando unit bombed three electrical substations and
tried to attack a police patrol, but after one of the members was arrested
in August, Mr. Bilbao fled to France, the documents claim.
Seven years later, Mr. Bilbao was arrested by French police and expelled to
Spain, where he was questioned about the shooting of Mr. Fernandez. In a
statement obtained by the National Post, he confessed to his involvement in
the assassination attempt.
The next day, however, he recanted, saying he had been tortured during his
interrogation. He was charged with membership in an armed organization, but
acquitted in 1989 for lack of evidence and set free.
The investigation into the newspaper shooting continued and in July, 1993,
police made another arrest. Manual Jose Chavarri Lopategul was convicted for
his role (although he claimed the attack was only meant to frighten Mr.
Fernandez).
When he named Mr. Bilbao as one of the gunmen, Spain issued an arrest
warrant. The information was forwarded to Interpol and Mr. Bilbao fled to
Mexico, and then to Canada in 1996. He used a false Spanish passport to get
in.
He used at least five fake names, according to Canadian immigration. "In
fact," a CBSA official said at a hearing, "he seems to have an infinite
supply of fraudulent documents available to him."
In B.C.'s Lower Mainland, he was known as Serge Brault. Others knew him as
Juan. He found work at construction and renovation sites in Langley, West
Vancouver and at the University of B.C. campus, and lived on Fraser Street
with his wife Iciar Otaegui Olagaray, who worked at a care home.
Like Mr. Bilbao, Mr. Sancho had fled terrorism charges in Spain. "Spanish
intelligence indicate that he was involved in three homicides and one
attempt in 1996, 1997 and 2000," says an RCMP report. The last attack, on
Jan. 21, 2000, killed Lieutenant-Colonel Pedro Blanco Antonio Garcia of the
Spanish Army.
Using the alias Jose Perales-Herrera, Mr. Sancho lived on East 15 Ave. in
Vancouver with his girlfriend Ekai Alcorta Zabaleta, a.k.a. "Maria
Gonzales." He worked as a carpenter at an antique reproduction company, and
she was employed as a house cleaner.
Asked what Mr. Sancho had been doing in Canada for the past six years, his
lawyer, William Sloan, said he was "living here, living with a lady and
doing what we all try to do. He was hiding basically, from the Spanish
police."
It all came to an end when Mr. Sancho's girlfriend left Canada in May and
flew to Paris, and made her way to the Spanish city of San Sebastion.
Spanish intelligence intercepted her phone calls. In one of them, she spoke
to Mr. Sancho, who talked about leaving Canada within a week and
said the "other" was also departing. Spanish intelligence believed he was
referring to Mr. Bilbao.
With confirmation the two fugitives were in Canada, Spain's National
Intelligence Centre notified the RCMP Liaison Officer at the Canadian
embassy in Madrid. Spain wanted Canadian police to conduct "surveillance and
discreet enquiries."
"The Spanish Authorities have expended considerable resources over the years
investigating the whereabouts of these subjects," the RCMP officer wrote in
a May 30 memo to headquarters in Ottawa. "They feel that this is a unique
opportunity and are asking for Canadian assistance to bring them to justice
before they disappear."
The RCMP arrested Mr. Bilbao in Vancouver two days later. During recorded
interviews with an immigration officer, he called ETA a "military
organization" fighting to free Basque country.
He referred to himself as a "militant" member of the Basque political party
Herri Batasuna (suspected of being an ETA front) and complained about the
Spanish government, saying, "To me, the government is worse than ETA."
His lawyer Phil Rankin said the government's case is built on statements
obtained under torture and Mr. Bilbao fears he will be tortured again if
Canada returns him to Spain. "There's quite a bit of evidence of torture of
Basque suspects, even very recently," Mr. Rankin said.
Nineteen days after Mr. Bilbao's arrest, police tracked Mr. Sancho to Quebec
through his banking activities. He was arrested on the ferry that links
Quebec City and the south shore town of Levis.
Canadian immigration officials claim he was on his way to the French islands
of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, and planned to go from there to continental
Europe, but his lawyer said he was simply on a cycling holiday.
"They claimed that he wanted to bike to Europe or something. They've got
some wild theories," Mr. Sloan said. "He was just on his summer holidays; he
was on a bike tour."
Their cases are now before the Immigration and Refugee Board. Mr. Bilbao's
case resumes today in Vancouver. Mr. Sancho's case was to be heard behind
closed doors, but the National Post applied to open it to the public and the
IRB agreed. His case begins on Oct. 4.
The RCMP's Integrated National Security Enforcement Team in B.C. showed the
photo they found to a "confidential source" who identified everyone in the
shot.
The informant told police a woman in the foreground was Mr. Torres' wife,
Margaret Moon, the organic farmer who runs Moon Farm and sells her produce
at the market in Whistler, B.C.
A Canadian immigration report says Mr. Torres was stopped at the Douglas
border crossing in B.C. in April, 2005, as he was returning to Canada from a
holiday in Mexico.
Interviewed by immigration officers, he said he had been living in D'Arcy
and confirmed he had been a member of the International Revolutionary Action
Group.
Asked if he had any involvement with ETA, he said: "No, I don't like
nationalists, particularly."
The CBSA decided to deport Mr. Torres for terrorism. Instead of holding him
in custody, he was instructed to come to a hearing before the IRB in
Vancouver on Jan. 12, 2006.
He never showed up. Police are still looking for him.
---
MARIO INES TORRES
Date of Birth Jan 1. 1954. Born Barcelona.
1974 Joins "Gari" -- International Revolutionary Action Groups.
1974 Involved in kidnapping bank director in Paris and two car bombings.
1978 Arrested in Paris as part of a group planning robbery. 1980 Tried in
absentia in Paris and sentenced to three years.
1984 Arrested in Spain for being part of an armed group. 1986 Madrid court
issues arrest warrant.
1987 Arrested by Finnish police and jailed.
1988 Extradited to Spain. 1996 Applies for a Spanish passport at the Spanish
Consulate in Mexico City.
2005 Photographed with two suspected ETA terrorists in D'Arcy, B.C.
ETA
A.K.A. Basque Homeland and Liberty.
Headquarters Basque regions of Spain and France.
Goal Creation of an independent Basque state.
Methods Has been called the most dangerous terrorist organization in Europe,
said to have killed more than 800 people and carried out about 1,600
terrorist attacks. Legal status Put on Canada's list of outlawed terrorist
groups on April 2, 2003.
Source: Public Safety Canada
NP
For more on this story visit our news blog at nationalpost. com/posted
BACK STORY
Why did it take so long to capture two suspected ETA terrorists hiding in
Canada?
The Canada Border Services Agency says it did not know they were here until
Spanish authorities came forward in May.
Unless the CBSA is told a suspected terrorist might be travelling to Canada,
or might already be here, there isn't much the agency can do, said spokesman
Erik Paradis. "We need to know," he said. "There's a sense of urgency as
soon as we know that person is on our territory or is coming to Canada.
"We don't want these people in Canada.We want them out as soon as possible
and we're going to take all the measures that need to be taken in order to
remove those persons from Canada."
Once the CBSA got word from Spain the men were believed to be in Canada, the
agency worked with police to quickly locate and arrest them, and is now
attempting to deport them.
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