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| Leaders of Spanish far-left group GRAPO convicted in France
PARIS, July 23 (AFP) - Seven members of the far-left Spanish group GRAPO -- including its two former leaders -- were given jail-terms of up to ten years by a French court Wednesday after being convicted on terrorist charges. The four men and three women were arrested in Paris in November 2000 in what was described as a crippling blow to the organisation -- the First of October Anti-Fascist Resistance Group -- and its political wing the Reconstituted Spanish Comunist Party (PCER). BizVantage – Beyond the news - a realtime Net clipping service: for business, investment or technology. GRAPO is held responsible for about 80 murders in Spain mainly between 1975 and 1985. Though its activities tailed off in the early 1990s it re-emerged with a series of bombings and three killings in 2000. Among those convicted in Paris was Manuel Perez Martinez, 58, who was named by the Spanish government as GRAPO's leader at the time of his arrest, and Fernando Silva Sande, 49, who was in charge of armed operations. Both were given ten years in jail. Three others were given ten years and the rest lesser terms. All were convicted of belonging to a terrorist group and of possessing arms and false papers. During the trial Silva Sande and his girlfriend Maria Victoria Gomez Mendez admitted being members of GRAPO, but Perez Martinez and the others said they belonged to the PCER which they insisted was a separate organisation. The French government has already agreed to extradite Silva Sande and Gomez Mendez to Spain, where they are wanted for the 1990 murder of Jose Ramon Munoz - a prisons doctor who treated GRAPO members during a hunger strike. It was not clear if they would serve their terms in France first. In July 2002 French and Spanish police detained 14 people who they described as the new leadership that took over GRAPO after the 2000 arrests. bur-hs/jfs France-Spain-justice
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