A court in France has acquitted the former head of the Basque terrorist group ETA, José Antonio Urrutikoetxea Bengoetxea, better known as Josu Ternera, in the last outstanding case against him in the country.
The ruling by the Paris Court of Appeal on July 2, 2026 clears the way for his eventual surrender to Spain, where he is wanted over several attacks carried out during his decades at the helm of the organisation.
Judicial sources told that the 75-year-old had been acquitted of belonging to ETA between 2002 and 2005, the period covered by the final French proceedings.
Prosecutors had sought a five-year sentence, arguing that Urrutikoetxea remained part of the group until it announced its dissolution in May 2018. His defence maintained that he had left in September 2006.
Urrutikoetxea was detained in May 2019 in Sallanches, in the French Alps, after nearly 17 years on the run. He had fled the Basque Country in 2002 after being called to testify before Spain’s Supreme Court.
The acquittal removes the last legal obstacle in France to his handover. Roughly a month earlier, the same court had authorised his surrender to Madrid under a European arrest warrant issued by Spain’s National Court, though it deferred execution until the final French case concluded.
In Spain, Urrutikoetxea is wanted by the National Court over the 1987 bombing of a Civil Guard barracks in Zaragoza, northeast Spain, in which 11 people were killed, including several children.
He is also sought in the so-called herriko tabernas case, which concerns the financing of ETA through a network of Basque bars, and has been charged over the alleged direction of a terrorist organisation.
The surrender request had been complicated by the sequence of proceedings in France, as Spanish authorities could not take custody until the French cases had run their course.
Urrutikoetxea, who has cancer, has spent much of the period since his 2019 arrest under judicial supervision rather than in prison, with French courts gradually easing the restrictions on his liberty.
He was one of ETA’s longest-serving leaders and read out the statement announcing the group’s disbandment in May 2018. ETA killed more than 850 people over four decades of violence before laying down its arms.
Prosecutors would still be able to appeal the acquittal to France’s highest court, a process that could take several months.
