Update, Sunday morning: The 5 firefighters have returned home. Scroll down.
A GROUP OF FIVE FIREFIGHTERS FROM SPAIN are in France for a course in mountain climbing, but they reached an obstacle that they weren’t prepared for.
On Tuesday a French policeman was killed by a group from ETA, a Spanish terrorist organization of Basque separatists. The murder took place near Paris when the police were involved in a gun battle after catching 2 ETA members filling the gas tanks of stolen cars. Two ETA members were captured but the rest got away. The early report on the fatal gun battle was broadcast on Spanish tv network ib3:
After the description of the terrorists was sent out, a retired policeman observed a group of Spaniards in a supermarket that met the descriptions. A clip from the surveillance cameras was sent to the Spanish police and they verified that the video showed ETA members. The tape was then broadcast widely across both Spain and France asking for the public’s help in identifying the men.
Here is the surveillance tape:
Unfortunately, the video was of the five firefighters who were passing through town on their way to the training session. That wasn’t discovered until after their arrest and the FF’s relatives recognized them from the tv.
The firefighters turned themselves in to police in suburban Melun and answered questions before being released, a French police official said. One of the firefighters, Oscar Gonzalez, told Spanish state broadcaster RTVE: “This has generated lots of problems for us, from the worry it has caused our families to all this rigmarole we’re going through here.”
Now the police agencies of both countries are embarrassed and the murder is still unsolved.
EuroNews has more on the story plus an English language video of the surveillance tape HERE.
Update, Sunday morning:
The five firefighters returned to their homes in Catalan Saturday night.
AFP photo taken at Aerport El Prat Saturday night
The Catalan government admitted that they had made a serious mistake by telling the French authorities that the men in the surveillance phots were Basque ETA members.
“If the Catalan government had not intervened, we would not be here now“, said one of the five firemen, Oscar Llop, to journalists to the airport. “We very well were treated by the French authorities“, he said, while adding that they had passed “a bad night” after discovering that they figured on the video.
Sourced from L’Express.
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