World

Lengthy prison sentence for ETA leader

13:14 pm on 23 July 2011

A court in Madrid, Spain, has sentenced a former military leader of the Basque separatist group ETA to prison for 377 years.

Garikoitz Aspiazu was arrested in a resort in the Pyrenees in France in November 2008.

The Efe news agency in Spain reports he was previously convicted of a role in the attempted assassination of a mayor in the northern town of Portugalete in 2002.

The BBC reports more than 820 deaths have been blamed on ETA over the past 40 years.