While the Polisario Front is trying hard to improve its image, it appears that there were close ties between the leaders of the Tindouf guerrilla and members of the separatist organization Basque ETA… In “Notes & Studies”, the Research Center on contemporary criminal threats had published in 1988 a paper revealing that, according to the Spanish secret services, some Euskadi Ta Askatasuna or ETA (Basque for "Basque Homeland and Freedom"), members would have been trained in Algiers camps in 1975 and would have had contacts with members of the Polisario Front.
At that time and according to a source close to the Polisario Front leaders contacted by “Polisario- Confidential”, the current Secretary General of the Front Mohammed Abdelaziz would have build up a friendship with José Luis Ignacio Irruretagoyena, the ETA main expert in the making of bombs.
Iruretagoyena Lanz had spent a few years in Nicaragua and El Salvador in the Eighties and was actively tracked by the Spanish police task force.
The friendship between the Polisario chief and the alleged Basque bomb maker would have lasted for long years, according to our interlocutor. The two would have held several secret meetings until September 2007 when the Basque terrorist was arrested with three of his aides in the French southwestern town of Cahors in a joint operation between the French police and the Spanish Guardia Civil.
