(AFP) – Aug 2, 2008

ARANJUEZ, Spain (AFP) — One of the most notorious members of the Basque separatist group ETA was released from a Spanish prison Saturday after serving 20 years for the murders of 25 people, sparking outrage from families of the victims.

By coincidence, the release of Jose Ignacio de Juana Chaos came on the 40th anniversary of ETA's first targeted killing, when a police officer was shot in the northern Basque Country.

Today, ETA is blamed for the deaths of 823 people in its campaign of bombings and shootings to carve a Basque homeland out of parts of northern Spain and southwestern France.

De Juana Chaos was convicted of the murders of 25 people in a string of 11 attacks, the most deadly of which was a car-bombing in Madrid in 1986 which killed 12 members of the Civil Guard police force.

He has never expressed remorse for his crimes.

He left the Aranjuez prison, north of Madrid, early Saturday accompanied by two lawyers and his wife, after serving around 20 years, 10 years less than the maximum allowed under Spanish law.

The release sparked a storm of protest from victims' groups, who said it was "an insult to the judicial system and an affront to the victims of ETA."

In Madrid, around 200 people attended a demonstration called by the Association of the Victims of Terrorism, which laid 25 bouquets of flowers at the site where the 12 Civil Guards were killed.

In the Basque city of San Sebastian, dozens of people attended another ceremony to pay homage to the 25 victims of De Juana Chaos.

Demonstrators carried Spanish flags with black borders, and placards with a photograph of the freed man and the words "It's sickening."

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero on Friday voiced "contempt" for De Juana Chaos, but emphasized that the law that allowed him to leave prison "must be respected."

Dozens of his supporters gathered in San Sebastian, home to several of the families of his victims, for a welcoming ceremony and to call for the release of other ETA prisoners.

But one of the supporters read a letter from De Juana Chaos saying that he could not join them due to security concerns and to avoid the "media circus."

Prior to leaving prison, the 52-year-old was on a hunger strike, his third since 2006, to protest what he said was "harassment" by the media and by judicial and prison authorities.

He complained particularly about an investigation into his assets aimed at determining whether he can pay some of the eight million euros that judicial authorities have demanded he hand over to the families of his victims.

Prosecutors at Spain's anti-terrorist court are also seeking the seizure of a flat bought by his wife in San Sebastian.

ETA, whose initials stand for Euskadi ta Askatasuna, or Basque Homeland and Freedom in the Basque language, is considered a terrorist organisation by the European Union and the United States.

On August 2, 1968, it staged its first targeted killing when three ETA members shot a high-ranking police officer outside his home in San Sebastian.

An ETA activist had shot and killed another police officer a few months earlier during an incident at a road checkpoint, but the killing had not been planned.

Its most recent victim was a policeman killed when a car bomb exploded in front of his barracks in the Basque Country on May 14.

ETA declared a unilateral ceasefire in March 2006, raising hopes for an end to the violence. But an ETA bombing at Madrid's airport in December 2006 that killed two men put an end to tentative peace talks with the government.

The group officially terminated the ceasefire in June last year, and since then Spanish authorities have taken a hard line against it, arresting dozens of leaders of the organisation and its banned political wing.

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