December 4, 2008 (LPAC) -- The Spanish British-backed ETA terrorist outfit is the most likely author of the execution yesterday of a Spanish entrepreneur, Ignacio Uria Mendizabal, shot at point blank in the parking lot of a bar in his hometown of Azpeitia, Spain during his regular daily coffee break. The 2 or 3 killers drove 20 km away in a stolen Alfa Romeo which they set on fire to get rid of all evidence, while recovering their own vehicle.

The 70-year-old Uria headed a public works company Altuna y Uria (400 employees), involved for several months in the construction of the Paris-Madrid TGV rail connection. The TGV infrastructure became a main target of ETA, which in a communiqué distributed earlier in August, claimed the TGV line "went against the interest of the Basque nation." Earlier this year, his company and two others were hit by three bomb attacks causing material damage, directly claimed by ETA. That didn't impress Uria, who didn't change his routine coffee break or employ any bodyguards.

The killing is seen as the first new violent action of ETA since the arrest of their supposed military commander Miguel de Garikoïtz Aspiazu Rubi, alias "Txeroki," arrested in France in mid-November.